Legal scrutiny at multiple levels delayed prosecution of IAS officers: TN
CHENNAI: Under attack from the court over the inordinate delay in sending the proposal for obtaining sanction for prosecuting two IAS officers in the alleged tender irregularities case, the government on Tuesday informed the court that exhaustive scrutiny of case papers running to huge volumes consumed considerable time and there was no deliberate delay.
The submission was made in an affidavit filed by the public secretary when the contempt of court petition by Jayaram Venkatesan of Arappor Iyakkam, seeking to punish the DVAC officials for not filing a chargesheet in the Rs 98-crore tender irregularities committed during the tenure of SP Velumani in the previous AIADMK government, came up for hearing.
State public prosecutor Hasan Mohamed Jinnah filed three affidavits on behalf of the public secretary Reeta Harish Thakkar, vigilance commissioner K Manivasan and the director of DVAC Abhay Kumar Singh as per the earlier directions of the court, which had sought explanation for the delay in sending the proposal for sanction.
Stating that the case documents run to about 1.30 lakh pages, of which, the papers relating to the two IAS officers accounted for about 46,000, the public secretary said considerable time was taken for detailed scrutiny of the records and subjecting them to rigorous tests as per the service rules, vigilance guidelines and other procedures.
She said the delay caused in processing the proposal for sanction was not deliberate as the department has to examine the investigation report at “multiple levels” and “legal scrutiny”.
Explaining the reasons for the time taken between receiving the reports from the vigilance commissioner on January 5, 2024 and sending the proposal for getting sanction in August, 2025, the senior officer said the papers required high-level consideration and at approval at the appropriate administrative level.
As per the instructions of the Department of Personnel and Training of the centre, thousands of pages of documents had to be translated in English from vernacular language and they were submitted along with the proposal for sanction of prosecution, the public secretary said, adding the delay was purely “administrative and procedural” in nature and “devoid of malafide intention”.