Maharashtra state minister and NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal has been discharged by a special court in a case filed by the state Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), linked to alleged irregularities in the construction project for a library at Mumbai University.

With this order, Chhagan Bhujbal has been discharged from all pending corruption cases filed by the ACB when he served as a Public Works Department Minister from 2004 to 2014.

Mumbai University library case

The ACB had booked Chhagan Bhujbal and others for allegedly causing a loss of over Rs 75 crore to the state and benefiting a private firm. The others have also been discharged.

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The agency had alleged that Chhagan Bhujbal, who was then the Public Works Department Minister, ignored the objections raised in the proposal and the feasibility report. It also alleged that Bujhbal received kickbacks for favouring a particular developer for the construction of the library at the Mumbai University.

The case also involved allegations of leasing out of prime government land at a throwaway price. 

According to the ACB, in 1986, the Mumbai University gave a part of its Kalina campus land to the state government, on a condition that a central library would be built there.

Bhujbal, through his lawyer Sudarshan Khawase, had submitted that there was no evidence about any irregularities in the Mumbai University corruption case. The discharge plea said there was no pecuniary advantage to Bhujbal or the private firm, as was alleged, and that transactions were part of funds for awareness of another government project.

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The court was told that audits related to these transactions also showed no proven irregularity.

Chhagan Bhujbal spent over two years in jail in a separate case filed by the ED in 2016 and was discharged in January 2026. In 2021, he was discharged in a corresponding case filed by the ACB, related to the construction of Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi.

The ACB had filed a case against Bhujbal and others in 2015 after a PIL filed in the Bombay High Court sought an inquiry into alleged irregularities in awarding contracts worth over Rs 100 crore for three projects in 2006 when Bhujbal was the PWD minister.

The contracts in question were given to Chamankar Developers for the construction of Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi, a new Regional Transport Office building in Andheri and a state guest house in Malabar Hill.