Supreme Court agrees to urgently hear Punjab's plea against CBI probe into CM Mann's office

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear urgently the Punjab government's plea against the Punjab and Haryana High Court order that directed the CBI to investigate corruption allegations linked to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann's office, setting up a bruising legal battle between a state government and the central agency it stripped of general consent in 2020. The High Court on Monday ordered that the case arising from three letters written by the Enforcement Directorate to Punjab's Director General of Police be handed to the CBI, with a report to be filed within two months. The ED's letters, dated July 24, July 31 and August 7, sought registration of a criminal case against Rajbir Singh Ghuman, the Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister Mann, and alleged associates Nitin Gohal and Bir Devinder. The allegations are stark: the ED claims Ghuman was running a racket involving the transfer and posting of officials, including IAS and IPS officers, interfering in administrative transfers, postings and government tenders. The agency also flagged attempts to obtain confidential government documents, fake consent letters and irregularities in Change of Land Use permissions, all allegedly routed through intermediaries linked to the Chief Minister's office. The matter surfaced during an ED money-laundering investigation involving a housing society. The case reached the High Court only because Punjab Police did not act. After the ED's letters produced no FIR, advocate Nikhil Saraf filed a public interest litigation arguing that allegations this serious, levelled against officials attached to the CM's office, warranted a fair and independent investigation free from the influence of Punjab Police and the state Vigilance Bureau. The petitioner also sought scrutiny of the money trail. The High Court agreed, transferring the case to the CBI. The political fallout has been swift. Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema announced the decision to approach the Supreme Court within hours of the High Court order, pointing to the state's 2020 withdrawal of general consent for CBI investigations on its territory. Mann himself has rejected the allegations as baseless and politically motivated, accusing central agencies of targeting political opponents. The opposition smells blood. Last month, the Shiromani Akali Dal urged Governor Gulab Chand Kataria to recommend a time-bound, court-monitored CBI probe into what it called an organised corruption racket being operated from the Chief Minister's office, asking why no FIR had been registered on the ED's reference despite letters naming the CM's OSD, associates and, in its telling, even the Chief Minister's wife. The High Court's order is not a finding of guilt. But it is a judicial verdict that the state's own agencies cannot be trusted to investigate the state's own rulers, and that is a wound no amount of political spin will close quickly. The CBI now has two months to examine the ED's material, the communications, the financial transactions and the government records, and to tell the court what it finds.