It was a bad Wednesday for Kripashankar Singh.
The Congress high command sacked the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee chief following the party’s poor show in the Mumbai civic polls.
The party action came close on the heels of the Bombay high court directed the police commissioner to lodge a first information report against him for allegedly amassing wealth more than his known source of income.
Singh will have to face prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Distancing himself from the court development, Singh claimed that he had volunteered to resign from his post after the political debacle in the Mumbai civic polls last week.
Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee chief Manikrao Thakre refused to comment on the sacking. On the court decision, Chavan said: “I have yet to see the court order.”
The court decision, which comes five days after the Mumbai civic poll results, does not auger well for Singh who has been facing huge criticism for the Congress defeat.
On Wednesday, a division bench of chief justice Mohit Shah and justice Roshan Dalvi observed: “The commissioner of police shall obtain sanction from the government to prosecute Singh for criminal misconduct under the Prevention of Corruption Act. We can easily conclude prima facie that there is cognisable offence disclosed against Singh.”
The court direction came while hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by activist Sanjay Tiwari, who alleged that the Congress MLA had amassed wealth disproportionate to his disclosed sources of income.
Singh’s counsels opposed the PIL saying that it was politically motivated.
The court directed police commissioner Arup Patnaik to file a compliance report on April 19 and kept the matter for hearing on the same day.
Asking Patnaik to treat the PIL as an FIR and the March 2011 report of the Anti Corruption Bureau as the investigation report, the high court has asked him to collect documentary evidence regarding all movable and immovable properties including flats, agricultural lands and vehicles in the names of Singh and his family members.
“We do not want to pass any directions regarding the bank accounts of the respondents as it is alleged that the money might have been washed out,” the court said.
“We are astounded to be informed that starting from scratch in the 1970s to 1998 when Singh became MLA and started earning Rs45,000 per month he has amassed more than dozen immovable properties. The disproportion of his acquisition to his income is shown to be 11.69%. Such calculation would beat not only our arithmetic, but also our conscience.”
“The respondents (Singh) have not filed I-T returns in those years when he stood for elections and hence the receipts were not accounted for or intimated to the tax authorities,” the judges added.
Singh’s lawyer sought for the order to be stayed to allow them to approach the SC. But, the high court refused to stay the order.
