Shimla, April 2
Himachal Pradesh Governor Urmila Singh on Wednesday granted sanction to the state government to prosecute former chief minister and Leader of Opposition Prem Kumar Dhumal in the case pertaining to grant of land on lease at Dharamsala to the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) headed by his son and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur.

The HPCA is under investigation for wrongfully converting a registered society into a company. The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau had registered a cheating and misappropriation case against the state cricket body on August 1, 2013, over alleged wrongdoings in land allotment and for constructing a residential complex for players near its stadium in Dharamsala.

Last week, Vigilance sought permission from Home and Personnel to prosecute Dhumal, Anurag and 16 others named in the chargesheet. The case against the cricket body was registered under Sections Section 406, 420 and 120 (b) of the IPC.

Officiating Chief Secretary P. Mitra yesterday met the Governor to seek permission to prosecute Dhumal, who also remained patron-in-chief of the HPCA. All relevant files and documents were handed over to the Governor yesterday. She gave the nod after consultations with senior functionaries of the Law Department today.

It is, however, not certain whether or not the state government will seek sanction to prosecute Anurag Thakur from Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. “Since Anurag committed the offence in his capacity as HPCA president and not as MP, we are contemplating whether or not to seek prosecution from the Speaker,” a senior official said. Anurag is also a joint secretary in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The government is also learnt to have granted sanction to act against IAS officers Deepak Sanan (Additional Chief Secretary) and Ajay Sharma (Bilaspur Deputy Commissioner) and sent it to the Department of Personnel and Training at the Centre.

While Sanan was Principal Secretary (Revenue), Sharma was Director, Sports and Youth Services, when the land was given on lease to HPCA to build a stadium.

The Vigilance chargesheet names 18 persons out of which five -- including Dhumal, Anurag, Sanan, Sharma and Himachal Administrative Service (HAS) officer Gopal Chand -- have been made main accused. The others include three retired IAS officers, HAS officers and HPCA office-bearers.

The nod for Dhumal’s prosecution is virtually history repeating itself in the game of political witch-hunting. A case was registered against Virbhadra Singh in August 2009 (when Dhumal was chief minister) by the Vigilance Bureau while he was the Union Minister for Steel regarding an audio CD containing the voice of the Congress leader and his wife Pratibha Singh.

Virbhadra after facing trial in the sessions court got a clean chit in the case on December 24, 2012, a day before he assumed office as chief minister for the sixth time.

The Congress is acting out of political vendetta by trying to implicate its opponents in false cases. The decision to give land to HPCA on lease was a collective decision of the Cabinet and individuals cannot be held responsible.— PK Dhumal, himachal ex-cm