The prosecution of senior IAS officer B.P. Acharya in the Emaar scam might get delayed following the Centre's move to seek the State government's opinion before granting sanction under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Under Central service rules, an IAS officer cannot be prosecuted without the sanction of the Union government. In its absence, the Court will not take cognisance of the charge-sheet.
Official sources indicated that the State government might take at least a month or two before giving its opinion as it had received voluminous case files and documents running into thousands of pages only last week. “We have to study the files on the basis of eight to nine check lists given in the guidelines by the Centre.”
Meanwhile, the CBI on Friday sought the State government's opinion to prosecute another IAS officer Y.Srilakshmi in the Obulapuram illegal mining case and also submitted the relevant documents.
Quoting earlier court judgments, CBI sources maintained that charge-sheets could be filed even without the sanction for prosecution.
However, for the court to take cognisance and allow prosecution, the investigating agency had to take permission from the Centre. To support their argument that permission was not necessary to file charge-sheets, they cited two judgments delivered by the Apex Court - Ishwar Piraji Kalpatri Vs State of Maharashtra and State of Bihar Vs P. P. Sharma.
The sources said sanction for prosecution was also not required in cases booked under Section 120 B and 420 of the IPC. They also cited another judgment which held that sanction would be deemed automatic if the authority concerned did not respond within three or four months in cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Following media reports that the Centre was adopting “delaying tactics” by seeking State's opinion for sanctioning prosecution at the “instance of IAS lobby”, top officials dismissed such talk as without basis.
They denied that the IAS Officers' Association had ever tried to interfere with the case. It had only once conveyed to the Chief Minister its concern over the manner in which senior IAS officers were grilled by the CBI.
