Team Herald
PANJIM: The High Court of Bombay at Goa on Wednesday issued notice to Goa Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari and Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant, for rejecting the Goa Lokayukta’s order recommending filing of FIR against former CM and BJP senior leader Laxmikant Parsekar and two others in connection with illegal second renewals granted to 88 iron ore mining leases, which were quashed and set aside by the Supreme Court.
The Governor and the Chief Minister are the Competent Authority designated under the Goa Lokayukta Act, 2011.
The notice has been issued in a writ petition filed by Goa Foundation, challenging the orders of the Competent Authority dated April 15, 2020 to reject the Lokayukta report on the mining matter. The petitioner has pleaded to set aside the order passed by the Authority.
Former Lokayukta Justice (retired) PK Misra in a report in January, had recommended filing of FIR against Parsekar, former Mines Secretary Pawan Kuman Sain and ex-Mines Director Prasanna Acharya for criminal conspiracy, through the Anti Corruption Bureau.
The report also recommended that after filing FIR, investigation be entrusted to an independent agency like CBI and that Sain and Acharya be declared as “unfit” to hold offices currently held by them. The High Court has also issued notices to Parsekar, Sain and Acharya.
After the government rejected the report, Misra had written to then Governor Satyapal Malik questioning the very need for a Lokayukta if its recommendations are regularly rejected by the government “given the usual attitude of protecting the privileged and the powerful”.
The petitioner in the Writ Petition said that it was the case of the complainant before the Lokayukta that the orders granting bulk of second renewals to the mining leases were issued under the signatures of only three persons, Parsenkar, Sain and Acharya, in the government.
“In its investigations, the Lokayukta focused substantially on 56 mining leases whose renewal orders were issued within the span of just one week ie, between January 6, 2015 to January 12, 2015,” it said.
“In fact, 31 lease renewal orders were issued on January 12, 2015 itself – which is the very date on which the power of the State government to renew mining leases was rescinded by an ordinance requiring States to auction such leases so as to bring enhanced revenues to the public exchequer,” it added.
