Former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and his wife Pratibha Singh moved the Delhi High Court on Wednesday challenging a local court order to frame charges against them for allegedly amassing disproportionate assets.

The 82-year-old Congress leader and his wife have sought quashing of the December 10, 2018, trial court order directing framing of charges against them.

The case is likely to come up for hearing on Thursday.

The trial court has fixed the matter for January 29 to formally frame charges against the couple and the other accused.

Mr. Singh claimed in the plea that the offence of possessing disproportionate assets under the Prevention of Corruption Act, if any, was said to have been committed in Himachal Pradesh and the consent of the State government was necessary to initiate an investigation.

The plea contended that the trial court was only required to look into the effect of the investigation conducted without consent and not to look into the law as to whether consent was necessary.

The CBI had registered the case against Mr. Singh and seven others for allegedly amassing assets worth ₹10 crore disproportionate to their known source of income when he was a Union Minister in the UPA government.

The matter was transferred by the Supreme Court from the Himachal Pradesh High Court to the Delhi High Court, which on April 6, 2016, asked the CBI not to arrest Mr. Singh and had directed him to join the probe.

The other seven accused are LIC agent Anand Chauhan, Chunni Lal Chauhan, Joginder Singh Ghalta, Prem Raj, Vakamulla Chandrasekhar, Lawan Kumar Roach and Ram Prakash Bhatia.

The court in its 105-page order had said that Virbhadra Singh and Anand Chauhan “fraudulently and dishonestly” signed a MoU by ante-dating it to give an impression that it was signed on June 15, 2008.

It had added that since the document was made for showing unaccounted money as sale proceeds of apples, they were liable to be charged for the offence of forgery.

A chargesheet running into over 500 pages, filed in the court, claims that Mr. Singh had amassed assets worth ₹10 crore which were disproportionate by 192% of his total income during his tenure as Union Minister.

(With PTI inputs)