‘ACB will probe all 247 SRA complaints’

Clearing the decks for an impartial and timebound investigations into the alleged nexus between developers and government officials, Bombay High Court on Thursday directed the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to probe all 247 complaints registered against the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) approved projects in Mumbai.

Earlier, on March 21, a one-man committee of Principal Secretary GS Gill was assigned the task to make a preliminary enquiry into the complaints of large-scale corruption.

A division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice JN Patel and Justice SC Dharamadhikari on Thursday directed the Gill committee to revert all the complaints back to the ACB.

The court went a step further and said that the complaints forwarded to the ACB by the Gill committee should be investigated by the ACB exclusively. The latter would not require the state government’s permission to proceed with its investigations, and no government circular could overwrite the statutory law.

The ACB has been asked to complete its investigations and file a report in six months’ time.

The court also made it clear that no code of conduct could come in the way of these investigations to preempt the state government from trying to use the forthcoming elections to stall investigations.

The Gill committee would now be restricted to making preliminary inquiry into complaints against the SRA projects, in which only government officials have been accused of corruption.

Right to information (RTI) activist Shailesh Gandhi drew the court’s attention to a diary which lists the names of people involved in various SRA scams which had not been taken into account by the ACB till now. He also alleged that the state government was playing with words.