HC moved over rejection of request for prosecution nod

Govt sat for 5 yrs on Lokayukta police request for approval to try PWD engineer

For the first time, the Lokayukta police have moved the High Court, challenging the State government’s decision to reject request for Prosecution Sanction Order (PSO) of a government servant.

The police have filed a writ petition stating that the competent authority held a parallel inquiry after the final report was submitted by the Lokayukta police along with the PSO request.

The officer in question is G Guruprasad, Chief Engineer PWD, who was raided in a disproportionate assets case.

Guruprasad was raided in 2007 when he was Chief Engineer in Minor Irrigation Department, Vijayapura. The police had unearthed assets disproportionate to his known sources of income and completed the investigation in 2009.

The first PSO request was sent to the State government on October 22, 2009, followed by repeated reminders. After taking nearly five years, the State government rejected the PSO in February 2014. The Lokayukta police found that the competent authority for according PSO had held a parallel inquiry.

“The competent authority is not supposed to hold any inquiry based on the report submitted by the Lokayukta police. In this case, the competent authority even took reply from the accused government servant on the investigation details given along with the PSO request. Based on the reply submitted by the accused, the competent authority rejected the PSO request,” an official said. The Lokayukta police’s writ petition challenging the government’s decision to reject the PSO request was filed in February 2015 and notice has been ordered to be issued to the government on March 10.

This is not the only case in which the State government has rejected PSO request sent by the City Lokayukta police unit. Sources said so far different competent authorities have rejected 25 PSO requests in DA cases.

These include cases pertaining to IAS officers P B Ramamurthy, I R Perumal, S Shantappa (IFS) and C Somashekhar (KAS).
 
The city unit of the Lokayukta police is still waiting for PSOs in important cases.
The competent authorities have been delaying PSOs in the DA cases of chief engineers of PWD S C Jayachandra, B Guruprasad, N Lakshman Rao Peshwe (who was Managing Director of Karnataka Neeravari Nigama) and S M Ramakrishna (Additional Chief Engineer).