Supreme Court breather for ex-CM Ashok Chavan in ‘paid news’ case

Former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan on Thursday got some relief from the Supreme Court (SC) in the alleged paid news case. 

The SC on Thursday stayed an ongoing probe by the Election Commission (EC) into the authenticity of Ashok Chavan's spending during the 2009 state assembly polls allegedly involving expenses on “paid news”.

A bench of Justice Altamas Kabir, Justice SS Nijjar and Justice Jasti Chelameswar stayed the EC proceedings on the argument made by Chavan’s counsel Gopal Subramaniam that national the poll Ombudsman had no jurisdiction to enter into an area that can only be treaded on by an election tribunal in a poll petition by an aggrieved contestant.

The SC also issued notices to the poll panel, the Maharashtra unit of the BJP and other complainants, including BJP leaders Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Kirit Somaiyya on whose plea the probe had been launched. The bench sought replies to its notices within two weeks and posted the matter for further hearing on December 2.

The HC on September 30 had given the poll panel its green signal to go ahead with the probe into Chavan's poll account on the complaints of former state minister Madhav Kinhalkar, who was defeated by Chavan from the Nanded assembly constituency.

The EC had begun proceedings against Chavan on April 2 on the complaints, which alleged that he had shown to the commission a poll expenditure of merely Rs11,000 despite paying money to various newspapers for favourable coverage of his election campaign.