The Supreme Court on Tuesday proposed to lay down guidelines for grant of sanction to private complainants in corruption cases, saying the bar provided in the law was being used as a “shield” to protect the corrupt.
“The original purpose of the bar was to protect honest public servants form frivolous prosecution, (but) now it has become a ‘shield’ to protect the corrupt. It is because of this that even genuine cases are not proceeded with,” a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly told attorney-general Goolam E. Vahanvati, who continued to defend Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue of sanction for the prosecution of former minister A. Raja in the 2G spectrum scam.
The court then asked what the maximum time limit to decide an application by a private individual for grant of sanction should be, to which Mr Vahanvati proposed six months. But he also stressed that such sanction could be granted only after the complaint was filed in court, and not before — as sought by former law minister Subramanian Swamy in the 2G spectrum case.
The attorney-general claimed Dr Swamy’s plea to the PM was “misconceived” as under Section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption Act the question of sanction would arise only after he had filed a complaint with a competent court.