Over 400 graft cases still pending, shows ACB data

At least 403 corruption cases are waiting for a prosecution sanction from the Rajasthan government since 2022 despite the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) has trapped 45% of them red-handed, revealed the data produced by the agency during the ongoing state assembly.

- Senjuti Sengupta

JAIPUR:

In response to a question by the Malviya Nagar MLA Kali Charan Saraf, the ACB has replied that they have made at least 1,592 applications seeking an approval from various departments of the Rajasthan government in the span of two years between 2022 and 2024 to prosecute any corrupt officer or an employee.

However, a total of 403 of them are yet pending with the government, of which 183 are the ones in which the ACB caught the accused red-handed, showed a classification of the data.

According to section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act 1988 (as amended in 2018), the ACB requires a prior approval to prosecute the accused public servants from their concerned higher authorities once the investigation is over.

"Government or any competent authority shall, after the receipt of the proposal requiring sanction for prosecution of a public servant under this subsection, endeavour to convey the decision on such proposal within a period of three months from the date of its receipt," the act read.

However, the ACB's data revealed that all these 403 cases are waiting for a sanction for the prosecution under section 19 of the PC Act even after the deadline of three months was past years ago.

While a total of 102 graft cases are waiting for the approval of prosecution since 2022, at least 47 of them are waiting since 2023, and another 254 since 2024.

As per the data, a maximum of 80 such graft cases are pending for approval with the Directorate of Local Bodies (DLB) followed by 69 at the Panchayati Raj (PR) Department, 59 at the Department of Personnel (DoP), 37 at the Revenue Department, and at least 21 with the state police.