The Lokayukta report, which proved a nemesis of outgoing chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, was on Wednesday submitted to the Supreme Court with a plea for further investigation into it by the CBI or a special investigating
agency to launch the prosecution against the named persons. The second report of Justice N. Santosh Hegde, who demitted the office of Lokayukta on Tuesday, was filed in the Supreme Court by the NGO Samaj Parivartan Samudaya (SPS) on whose PIL the green bench had suspended mining in the entire Bellary district of Karnataka last week.
“Under the circumstances, when the involvement of the chief minister and other ministers is established, when big companies are involved and situation of systematic collapse is noted, it is extremely essential in the interest of the rule of law to launch the prosecution in these cases. But credible investigation on the basis of the Lokayukta report cannot be done by the state police which is under the control of the same forces that have allowed this grave situation to develop,” SPS said in its petition.
Besides the CM, ministers, several other politicians and officials, companies and even the Central and state PSUs had been “indicted” by the Lokayukta for indulging in illegal mining in Karnatka and on the border area of Andhra Pradesh, the petitioner “therefore requests the court to direct the probe by the CBI or appoint a SIT to investigate the case”.
Since the transactions pointed out by Lokayukta were “clear instances of quit-pro-quo amounting to a serious offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act”, a further probe by an impartial investigating agency to collect the credible evidence was necessary to launch the prosecution, it said.
The NGO said the CBI was already investigating some of the pending illegal mining cases and in such a situation there should be no problem in expanding the ambit of its probe to include all those cases referred in Lokayukta report.