Govt to go for ACB probe against officers after 3-month wait

During Question Hour in state Assembly, Home Minister R R Patil, while replying to Vijayrao Auti (Shiv Sena) and others said if the permission was not granted by the departments to go ahead with the open investigation against the tainted officers, the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) will not hesitate to launch a probe after that period.

Similarly, the ACB will file charge sheets in the court against the accused officers after waiting for six months, if the necessary permission was not accorded.

In his written reply, Patil admitted that as on November 30 this year, there were 18 cases pending where the concerned departments had not accorded their sanction to go ahead with the open investigation.

Similarly, there were 56 cases pending with the state ACB where charge sheets could not be filed in the courts due to non-grant of sanction by the respective departments, as on October 31 this year.

Patil also informed the House that about 56 cases of class I and class II officers were pending in respective courts since 2008. There were 159 cases of class III and class IV employees.

A mechanism was evolved where the Additional Chief Secretary was holding meeting every month with the heads of departments to review the progress of pendency of such cases and to find out the scope for improvements and speed up the process, Patil said.