Former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami and eight other eminent citizens have filed a public interest litigation in the Delhi High Court challenging the appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as the Comptroller and Auditor General. The petitioners moved the HC after the Supreme Court had last week turned down the plea and asking them to move a lower court.The PIL was filed on July 15 after an apex court bench headed by the then chief justice Altamas Kabir had refused to hear it saying, "the High Court is equally equipped to deal with the matter."
Now, a bench headed by acting chief justice B D Ahmed of the high court is likely to hear the PIL on July 24.The PIL, filed by lawyer Prashant Bhushan, has sought setting aside of Sharma's appointment contending that it was made arbitrarily and "without any system for selection, without any selection committee, any criteria, any evaluation and without any transparency".The petitioners also included former Naval chiefs RH Tahiliani and L Ramdas, former deputy CAG, BP Mathur; former secretaries of various Central ministries Kamal Kant Jaswal, Ramaswamy R Iyer and EAS Sarma; former Indian Audits and Accounts Service officer S Krishnan and ex-IAS officer MG Devasahayam.
One of the grounds raised in the PIL is that during his tenure as the DG (acquisitions) or as the defence secretary, Sharma had cleared several major defence purchases some of which have turned out to be a source of embarrassment to the Centre.The defence deals referred to in the petition include procurement of 12 VVIP choppers from Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland for the Air Force at a cost of Rs 3,500 crore, which according to Italian cops involved alleged kickbacks of at least Rs 350 crore.The controversial Tatra truck deal was also cleared by Sharma, the petitioners said.
The PIL has also seeks a direction to the Centre to "frame a transparent selection procedure based on definite criteria and constitute a broad-based non-partisan selection committee, which after calling for applications and nominations would recommend the most suitable person for appointment as CAG". It also claimed the apex court's judgement quashing the appointment of PJ Thomas as Central Vigilance Commissioner applied to this case as well.
