Southern States - Karnataka   

Govt. to file affidavit before apex court

By Our Special Correspondent

GULBARGA Dec. 27. The Home Minister, Mallikarjun Kharge, said here on Saturday that the State Government would file a detailed affidavit before the Supreme Court on January 5 when the public interest litigation seeking the court's intervention on handing over the investigation of the multi-crore stamp paper racket to the Central Bureau of Investigation would come up for hearing.

Mr. Kharge told presspersons that the Government would inform the Supreme Court about its decision to hand over the case to the agency. The affidavit would contain a detailed report of the investigation by the Stamp Paper Investigation Team, a special unit of the State police which investigated the case so far, the progress made by the inquiry, the arrests made, and the 11 charge-sheets filed in the special court.

He said the investigation by the State police and the team had been appreciated by the Union Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, in his letter to the Government, seeking its cooperation for investigation by the Central agency.

Mr. Kharge said the decision of the Government to hand over the investigation to that agency was not a sudden turnaround from its earlier stand. It was based on the appeal made by Mr. Singh to ensure that the accused were not let off owing to separate investigations.

On the status of the charge-sheets already filed by the State police and the team, and the future of the special court, Mr. Kharge said everything depended on the verdict of the Supreme Court and it would be left to the Central agency to decide on the matter.

He said the Government wanted to put an end to the controversy created by the Opposition parties which failed to acknowledge the "honest" efforts made by it to crack the case and arrest most of the accused, including the prime accused, Abdul Karim Telgi.

Mr. Kharge pointed out that unlike in other States where the investigation was taken up on the directions of the court, the Karnataka Government took suo motu action and gave no room for complaints of complacency in arresting the accused. The State was the first to do away with stamp papers after the scam came to light, he added.

To a question, he said the ban on taking over of the investigation of cases by the CBI would remain in the State. Handing over the stamp paper case did not mean that the ban had been lifted.

Mr. Kharge, who refused to answer questions on the alleged involvement of the Minister for Small-Scale Industries, Roshan Baig, in the racket, said the latter had not offered to resign from the Ministry on moral grounds and the issue of his resignation did not crop up at the Cabinet meeting on Friday which decided to hand over the case to the CBI.

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