The Telangana government on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court challenging the state high court’s order transferring the investigation — into a case related to the alleged attempts to poach four Bharat Rashtra Samithi lawmakers into the Bharatiya Janata Party — to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) , an official privy to the development said.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for the Telangana government, who filed a petition in the Supreme Court, mentioned the same before a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justice P S Narasimha and Justice J B Pardiwala.
He brought to the notice of the Supreme Court that a special investigation team of the state police was investigating the case pertaining to alleged poaching of four BRS MLAs into the BJP, “as part of destabilising the state government”.
“The writ petition was filed first before the single judge bench of the high court, which transferred the case to CBI. The government went to the division bench which on Monday said that the petition was not maintainable and refused to grant protection. There is a grave urgency. If the CBI enters the investigation, everything will fail,” Dave said.
The CJI asked Dave to mention the matter again on Wednesday so that it could be listed and even without mentioning, it would come up for hearing next week.
Earlier in the day, advocate general of the Telangana government B S Prasad approached the single judge bench of the state high court headed by justice B Vijaysen Reddy requesting that the judgement given by the division bench be kept in abeyance for two weeks.
The judge, however, asked the advocate general to take permission from the chief justice of the high court for seeking a stay on the division bench order.
Justice Reddy said there were technical objections for granting stay on the order. “When the division bench refuses to grant such a relief and even by not giving any liberty to the state to move it before a single judge, how can the single judge bench deal with it,” he asked.
