New Delhi, March 04: The CBI has often faced flak for dragging its feet over important cases. But when it tries to act, it faces opposition from several government departments — both at the central and the state levels.
The resistance is in the form of delaying sanctions to the CBI to prosecute the corrupt public servants.
To file a chargesheet in the court, the CBI needs approval from the authorities concerned for each public servant booked under the charges of corruption and other crimes.
The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has observed that there are 99 corrupt government officials in the country whom the CBI is finding difficult to indict. This is because sanctions to prosecute them had been inordinately delayed by the respective departments or ministries.
The CVC also pointed out that the trend seemed to have almost doubled from 51 in October last year.
Ironically, all this comes five months after Chief Justice of India K. G. Balakrishnan attacked the government for apparently protecting corrupt public servants by delaying the permission to prosecute them by the CBI. Apart from the 99 corrupt officials, there are 26 others who have been accused of various crimes. Here too, sanctions have been delayed for over four months.
The ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions ( DoPT) has been named as the worst offender by the CVC. The ministry led by Prithviraj Chavan is delaying sanctions in 17 cases.
The ministry of finance is not far behind, with 10 cases pending before it while the Delhi government has not given approval to prosecute corrupt officials in four cases.
The defence ministry ( MoD) has delayed sanctions in two cases, including the oldest corruption case on the list against Ram Chander, an under secretary of the department.
The CBI had sought the permission to prosecute Chander way back on March 24, 2005, but is still awaiting a clearance.
The ministries of health and railways have two cases each pending before them.
The CVC also observed that very little had been done in cases where departmental action had been recommended.