NEW DELHI: Former Supreme Court judge Justice HS Bedi’s final report as chairman of the authority monitoring probe into 22 alleged fake encounters in Gujarat stirred a dormant controversy back to life in the SC on Wednesday with the state government stoutly opposing it being made public. The state claimed the ex-judge had gave a solo report without discussing it with other members.Justice Bedi was appointed chairman of the monitoring authority by an SC bench headed by Justice Aftab Alam in March 2012 when two petitions, one by late journalist B G Verghese and lyricist Javed Akhtar , alleged cover-up in the Gujarat police’s probe into the encounters. When the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter controversy was hitting the headlines, the SC had asked Justice Bedi to submit periodic status reports. Akhtar was nominated by Congress to Rajya Sabha in 2010.The authority headed by Justice Bedi had submitted 10 reports to the court but the 11th and final report evoked a sharp reaction from solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who appeared for Gujarat government, on Wednesday. Mehta told a bench of CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph that the 10 reports submitted earlier were finalised in consultation with other members of the authority but the 11th report was authored by Justice Bedi on his own without discussing it with other members.The bench sought to put an end to the controversy by seeking a clarification from Justice Bedi. It requested the former SC judge to specify “as soon as possible” whether the final report submitted by him to court on February 26 was his alone or that of the authority and posted the matter for hearing on January 9. “If Justice Bedi says he has shared the report with other members, then that is the end of the controversy,” the CJI said.However, the court acceded to Mehta’s request not to share the final report with the petitioners and their advocate Prashant Bhushan till the doubt was cleared by the former judge. It ordered the report to be kept in sealed cover.Mehta said Gujarat government’s preliminary objections, raised since 2007, questioning the locus standi of petitioners and their focus on Gujarat had not been dealt with by the SC till date. When he sought adjudication of the objections, CJI Gogoi said, “That is neither here nor there. We are not going into it.”The bench’s order said, “After submission of 10 interim reports, 11th (final) report has been submitted. We have perused some of the interim reports as well as the final report submitted on February 26, 2018. An objection has been raised by Gujarat government that the copy of the final report submitted by Justice Bedi is a unilateral action on the part of the former SC judge without taking views of the other members of the monitoring authority in contradistinction to the practice followed while submitting the earlier interim reports.