Centre okayed prosecution of 56 IAS officers for graft in last 10 years

The Centre allowed prosecution under Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act against 56 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers in last 10 years spanning both Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi governments.

Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had granted 102 prosecution sanctions against these 56 IAS officers between January 1, 2010 and March 26, 2019.

In the same time period, DoPT also denied permission for prosecution in 21 other cases related to 20 IAS officers.

This information was provided by DoPT to Lucknow-based Right to Information (RTI) Act activist Nutan Thakur on her application and in compliance of the Central Information Commission (CIC) order. Thakur had sought information regarding the sanction or denial of permission for prosecution of officers from 2010 to 2019.

Of 102 sanctions, 65 prosecution sanctions were given during the previous Manmohan Singh led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, while 37 sanctions were granted under the Modi led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime.

Of 21 cases of denial, 10 and 11 occurred during the UPA and NDA rules respectively.

According to DoPT, maximum number of sanctions were granted against R K Srivastava of UT cadre and Vinod Kumar of Orissa (12 cases each), followed by K S Kropha of Assam (9 cases), K S Samria of Assam (6 cases) and Sanjeev Kumar (Haryana), Pradeep Kumar (Jharkhand) and Pradeep Shukla (Uttar Pradesh).

Initially, DoPT had refused to share this information, however it complied when Information Commissioner Divya Prakash Sinha directed it to provide the same in the larger public interest.