Litigation can’t be quashed due to erroneous sanction
RULING Permission is required to check frivolous cases filed against officials, but they cannot take advantage of the provision, says SC
NEW DELHI: Criminal proceedings against government officials cannot be quashed midway if there is any error or irregularity in granting sanction by the authority against the accused, the Supreme Court has said.
Holding that requirement of sanction under the law is designed to check on frivolous and mischievous cases being filed against officials, a bench headed by Chief Justic e P Sathasivam said a government servant cannot take undue advantage of the provision.
Sanction is insisted upon so as to act as afilter t o kee p at bay any motivated or ill-founded prosecution against a public servant. “..a criminal proceeding mid-course on ground of invalidity of the sanction order will not be appropriate unless the court can also reach the conclusion that failure of justice had been occasioned by any such error, omission or irregularity in the sanction,” read the verdict overturning Patna High Court’s two directives quashing criminal proceedings against two Bihar government officials.
The HC’s reasoning for such an order was that the sanction prosecution against the officers was granted by the State’s Law ministry and not by their parent department.
The aggrieved employees had moved the HC challenging the maintainability of the criminal proceedings stating the sanction against them was invalid in law.
Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who wrote the judgement noted, “Any error, omission or irregularity in the sanction, which would also include the competence of the authority to grant sanction, does not vitiate the eventual conclusion in the trial including the conviction and sentence, unless of course a failure of justice has occurred.” “It is difficult to see how at the intermediary stage a criminal prosecution can be nullified or interdicted on account of any such error, omission or irregularity in the sanction order without arriving at the satisfaction that a failure of justice has also been occasioned,” the bench held, directing the start of trial against the two officials. It ordered the trial’s conclusion.
The SC quoted from the criminal law and observed: “...specific provisions have been incorporated in Section 19(3) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and in Section 465 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which, inter alia, make it clear that any error, omission or irregularity in the grant of sanction will not affect any finding or order passed unless in the opinion of the court a failure of justice has been occasioned. This is how the balance is sought to be struck.”