Karnataka High Court ignored law in allowing FIR, B S Yediyurappa tells SC

Former Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Monday told the Supreme Court that the Karnataka High Court ignored the statutory provision and the binding nature of the top court's judgement to allow lodging of a corruption case against him without requisite sanction.

Appearing for the politician, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, along with senior advocates Sidharth Luthra and Siddharth Dave submitted before a bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Hima Kohli that the High Court had wrongly interpreted a reference made to larger bench on question of sanction to allow the probe against the leader.

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"Law, as of now, is that a sanction from competent authority is a pre condition. But the High Court reversed it, even though sanction was positively refused in my case," Rohatgi said.

The High Court said the sanction is only at the stage of taking cognisance, while ignoring Section 17 (A) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 2018, which stated no inquiry or enquiry or investigation in case of public servants can be carried out without approval of the appropriate authority.

The bench, which conducted a brief hearing, put the special leave petition filed by Yediyurappa for hearing on Friday.

The court said, it would prefer to hear the arguments on behalf of activist-complainant T J Abraham, before issuing notice in the matter.

The Karnataka High Court had, in an order earlier on September 7, held that the rejection of sanction would not come in the way of proceedings against Yediyurappa.

The case related to allegation of bribes to the tune of Rs 12 crore to award a BDA contract for a construction firm to build a housing complex for the government during his tenure as CM in 2019-21.

An FIR had already been lodged against the Karnataka CM, his family members and others on September 16.