Supreme Court sends Yediyurappa's appeal against prosecution in land case to larger bench, cites judicial ‘propriety'

Indian Express

21-04-2025

The Supreme Court Monday deferred its verdict on former Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa's appeal against prosecution in a land denotification case, citing judicial 'propriety'. The court noted that the matter involved legal questions already under consideration by a larger bench in a different case and tagged Yediyurappa's plea to that case.
The bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was considering Yediyurappa's appeal that raised the question of the need for prior sanction under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act to prosecute public servants.
The bench, which reserved its judgement in the batch of matters on April 10, said Monday that while drafting the judgement, it noted that another two-judge bench had dealt with the very same question in a case titled Shamin Khan vs. Debashish Chakrabarty and Ors. The bench refrained from deciding the case as it was of the view that the reference pending since 2018 should be decided first.
'When we were about to start working on it, we realised that there is one another order passed by a coordinate bench that is of April 16, 2024…Shamim Khan versus Debashish Chakrabarty and others, the very same issues are now again referred to the larger bench. So we felt that propriety demands (that this too be referred to the larger bench). Therefore, we have said this,' said Justice Pardiwala.
'As far as maintaining judicial discipline, the coordinate bench of this court has refrained from proceeding further in deciding the underlying issue, which is under reference to a larger bench. We deem it appropriate to tag these petitions with the referred matter Manju Surana versus Sunil Arora and others. Registry directed to place these matters before the honorable chief justice of India for appropriate honors,' Justice Pardiwala said, reading from Monday's order.
He added, 'in this order also, we have formulated the issues.'
Senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, who appeared for Yediyurappa, said, 'It is our lapse that we did not point this (pending larger reference) out. Extremely sorry.'
The case relates to allegations that Yediyurappa, as deputy chief minister in 2006, denotified land acquired by the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board in Bengaluru North taluk to set up a hardware park, thereby causing a loss to the state exchequer.
A trial court dismissed the complaint against Yediyurappa and then minister for large and medium-scale industries Katta Subramanya Naidu. But the Karnataka High Court in 2021 set aside the trial court order and directed the lower court to take cognisance of the charges against them. Yediyurappa subsequently approached the Supreme Court, challenging the high court order.