NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to take up on February 17 a petition filed by Telangana police against the High Court's February 6 order, upholding the CBI probe directed into alleged criminal conspiracy behind attempt to poach BRS MLAs by the BJP.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala declined to give an earlier date despite repeated requests by senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, who mentioned the matter for urgent hearing.
The counsel contended the matter required urgent hearing because if the CBI took over the probe, the petition here would become infructuous.
"We will reverse the (HC's) order, if necessary," the bench said.
The plea before the top court contended the High Court has failed to appreciate that the CBI directly works under the Central Government and is under the control of the office of the Prime Minister and the Home Ministry.
"The Bharatiya Janata Party is in power in the Central Government and the allegations in the FIR are squarely and directly against the said party adopting illegal and criminal steps and methods to destabilize the Government of Telangana, the High Court therefore could not have entrusted the investigation to CBI in any case," it claimed.
In a setback to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao in the BRS MLAs alleged poaching case, the division bench of the Telangana High Court had on February 6 upheld the earlier order of a single judge on December 26, 2022 transferring the case to CBI.
The state government alleged the involvement of some top BJP leaders to poach its four MLAs, in order “to topple his government.”
According to the FIR by the state police, MLA Rohith Reddy alleged that the accused had on October 26, 2022 offered him Rs 100 crore and in return the legislator had to leave the BRS.
They also allegedly asked Reddy to bring some more BRS MLAs by offering Rs 50 crore each to join the BJP.
Three persons Ramachandra Bharati alias Satish Sharma, Nandu Kumar and Simhayaji Swamy, named as accused have already been granted bail.
The state government had on November 9, 2022 formed an SIT, comprising state police officers to investigate the matter.
A court had earlier rejected a plea by the SIT to name senior BJP leader B L Santhosh as accused in the matter.
In its plea, the state police claimed The High Court has not only interfered with the investigation by transferring the case to CBI but has issued drastic directions including setting at naught the investigation
already conducted by the state police and SIT.
"The impugned judgment of the High Court raises very serious and fundamental questions on the question of Democracy, Rule of Law and efforts to stop bribery of MLAs, who are public servants, to destabilize duly elected government," it said.
The petition also contended the High Court has "unnecessarily drawn conclusion that release of the CD by the Chief Minister on 03.11.2022 amounted to interference with the investigation and therefore concluded that investigation was not fair and violated the rights of Accused for fair investigation."
"In so doing the High Court failed to appreciate that Chief Minister was not party to the proceedings, there were no allegations of mala fides in the Writ Petition, that the averments in the Writ Petitions were only insufficient to reach such conclusion, that in any case the material released by the Chief Minister was already been in public domain having been filed before the Trial Court in two remand reports filed on 27.10.2022 and again on 29.10.2022 and was part of the Counter Affidavit filed before the High Court in the morning of 03.11.2022 along with all the materials. Further media has already recorded the details of allegation in FIR and other material prior thereto. In any case disclosure of such material did not effect and could not effect the investigation which was conducted properly and legally," it said.
