India, June 27 -- The state government has informed the Bombay High Court that it has refused permission to the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to investigate corruption allegations against former state revenue minister Balasaheb Thorat, saying the orders in question were quasi-judicial and not open to such scrutiny.

The submission was made on Thursday during the hearing of a petition filed by Thane activist Ajit Patil, who has sought a CBI investigation into allegations that Thorat illegally revised a 2013 order in 2021 to allow the conversion of an 85,000-square-metre plot in Thane from industrial to residential use.

A government lawyer told a division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Kamal Khata that the state had declined the ACB's req...