By IANS,
Mumbai : The judicial panel probing the Adarsh Housing Society scam Wednesday summoned two former chief ministers of Maharashtra to appear before it next month.
While Vilasrao Deshmukh has been asked to appear before the panel June 21 and 22, Sushilkumar Shinde has been summoned June 25 and 26.
Another former chief minister, Ashok Chavan, who was asked to appear before the panel Wednesday, had sought an exemption.
Subsequently, the two-member panel, comprising of former Bombayy High Court Judge J.A. Patil and former Maharashtra chief secretary P. Subrahmanyam, reserved their ruling on Chavan’s absence.
After the scam broke, Chavan stepped down as the chief minister Nov 9, 2010.
In a report submitted to the Bombay High Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation, which also is probing the scam, has mentioned that three former chief ministers Shinde, Deshmukh and Chavan owned ‘benami’ (by proxy) flats in the Adarsh Society.
The Enforcement Directorate has registered a money laundering case against 14 people in the scam, including Chavan.
The judicial panel in its interim report had said the land on which the Adarsh Society stood belonged to the state government, contrary to the claims made by the defence ministry that it was a defence land.