The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to entertain a petition of senior CPI(M) leader and former Kerala minister Pinarayi Vijayan for quashing of the Governor’s sanction order for his prosecution in the Lavalin scam case.
Since Vijayan had filed a writ petition challenging the Governor’s order of June 7, 2009 directly in the Supreme Court bypassing the Kerala High Court, a bench of Justices H S Bedi and C.K. Prasad told his counsel K.K. Venugopal that the direct petition to the top court could not be entertained as the remedy for him lied first in the HC.
In view of this, Venugopal preferred to withdraw the petition and the bench declared it “dismissed as withdrawn”.
Vijayan had challenged Kerala Governor R.S. Gavai’s order on the ground that it was contrary to the state cabinet’s decision disapproving the CBI request for grant of sanction for his prosecution.
The cabinet had rejected the CBI’s request for granting sanction on the ground that the agency had not been able to produce enough evidence to convince the government that a case was made out for his prosecution.