Adarsh: Petition seeks HC direction to CBI to produce evidence

A petition was filed in the Bombay High Court today seeking a direction to CBI to produce entire evidence during its investigation into the Adarsh Housing Society scam on the basis of which it had given a clean chit to former Maharashtra chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde.
The petition was mentioned personally by activist Pravin Wategaonkar before a bench of Justices V M Kanade and P D Kode who decided to hear the matter tomorrow, along with another petition filed by the same petitioner seeking to make Shinde as an accused in the Adarsh case.
Wategaonkar had in July 2013 filed the petition seeking to make Shinde as an accused.

However, in its reply on October 9, 2013, the CBI gave a clean chit to Shinde saying they had probed the case and found evidence against the former union home minister as "deficient and insufficient".
The petitioner also said that the Adarsh Commission, in its report tabled before the Maharashtra Legislature, had observed that Shinde, in his capacity as chief minister, had failed to pay attention to the suggestion given by the finance department against allotment of land to the Adarsh housing society.
The petitioner further said that Adarsh Commission report had also concluded that "Shinde had failed to note this and acted in undue haste to bestow benefit on the society".

Maharashtra government on June 9, 2011 had appointed the two-member judicial commission, led by a retired Bombay High Court judge J A Patil, with former state chief secretary P Subramanian being the member, to investigate the alleged irregularities and corruption.
Seeking the court's direction to CBI to produce all evidence it had gathered in the case, Wategaonkar argued that though the CBI did not find any evidence against Shinde, the Adarsh panel has stated that Shinde had failed to act in Adarsh case.