High Court to treat Shukla’s plea as PIL

Court irked by delay in CBI probe and DoPT's sanction to prosecute the IAS officer

The Allahabad High Court will treat the petition of IAS officer Pradeep Shukla, an accused in the multi-crore National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam, as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) and monitor its investigation. Shukla had filed a petition seeking quashing of the five FIRs registered against him by the CBI on the ground that the investigating agency had not taken proper sanction for prosecution from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which controls the service conditions of the IAS officers.

The court passed the order as it was not happy with the delays in the CBI investigation, as well as granting of sanctions by the DoPT. The Division Bench of Justices Amar Saran and Pankaj Naqvi said the reasons put forward by the agencies about the delay were unacceptable.

In its order, the Bench said: "We have taken a decision to henceforth treat this petition as a Public Interest Litigation and to call for reports periodically for monitoring the progress of the preliminary inquiries, investigations, grant of sanctions and other consequential matters for ensuring that there are no further unacceptable delays at different stages."

The court has also directed the Secretary of DoPT to submit an affidavit explaining the delays in granting sanction for filing of the chargesheet prepared by CBI against Shukla in the case pertaining to financial bungling in upgradation of 89 hospitals in the state.

The court also asked him to explain the steps being taken to streamline the process of granting sanction for prosecution of Shukla.

Shukla had been arrested on May 10 in connection with the case and granted bail on August 9 on technical grounds because the CBI had failed to file a chargesheet within the stipulated 90 days.

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