Chennai, Sep 20: The Centre informed Madras High Court that Prime Minister’s Office was the competent authority to grant statutory sanction required to prosecute IAS officers in criminal cases.
Appearing before the court, Sushil Kumar Patel (IAS), Joint Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training, said that files are sent first to Central Vigilance Commission for its remarks and then forwarded to the PMO to seek its sanction.
The submission was made in response to a query raised by the court to explain who the competent authority was to sanction prosecution against IAS officers and why it takes a very long time to obtain such sanction before prosecuting bureaucrats in corruption cases.
The court had raised the question during the hearing of a case related to the delay in obtaining sanction to prosecute two Tamil Nadu IAS officers in a Rs. 98.25-crore corporation tender irregularities case registered primarily against former AIADMK Minister S P Velumani.
Explaining the reason for the sanction not having been granted so far, Patel said that the DoPT had received voluminous documents running to thousands of pages from the State government, and they had to be carefully perused before sending them to the CVC for its remarks.
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