Nitish govt’s faceoff with judiciary

[1]

Reeling under rising Opposition pressure in the wake of an alleged scam worth Rs 11,412 crore, Bihar’s embattled Nitish Kumar government has almost set the stage for a faceoff between the judiciary and the state legislature.

Assembly Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary had strongly ruled against the Patna high court’s suggestion for a CBI probe into the so-called “treasury scam” highlighted in the CAG report.
The Speaker had said that “no outside agency” could interfere in the legislature’s affairs.
Following this, the top legal officials of the Bihar state government on Thursday held similar contentions before a division bench of the high court hearing the government’s plea to review its decision for a CBI probe.
Mr Chaudhary, an MLA from the ruling JD(U) whose role as Speaker has faced charges of pro-government bias several times earlier, ruled on Wednesday that no court of law or any other agency could interfere in the legislature’s affairs because the controversial withdrawals from the public exchequer were still being examined by the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC). In a jam-packed courtroom, Chief justice Rekha M. Doshit and Justice S.K. Katariyar, who had last week handed over the probe into the alleged massive financial irregularities to the Central Bureau of Investigation while hearing a PIL, listened to lengthy submissions made by the Bihar government’s counsels like senior Supreme Court lawyer L. Nageshwar Rao and the education minister’s counsel Banwari Sharma.
All the counsels argued that the court had little role to decide about the allegations made in the PIL because the CAG report was under the Public Accounts Committee’s examination at the moment.
Dinu Kumar, a senior advocate in the Patna high court who represents PIL petitioner Arvind Kumar Sharma, told the media later that the court’s decision for a CBI probe was “perfectly justified”. “The CAG report comes every year. There was no legislative action after the latest CAG report containing details of the financial irregularities was presented in the Assembly on July 14, 2009,” he said.
Hearing on the government’s interlocutory application opposing the CBI probe would continue on Friday.