Guwahati, March 7: The court of special judge, Assam, has directed investigating agencies to file chargesheets against 226 accused in 21 corruption cases against whom the requests for prosecution sanction are pending before the state government for long periods of time.

Special public prosecutor Golap Sarma today said the order was passed by special judge, Assam, Majed Ali, yesterday asking the investigating agencies to file the chargesheets within 10 days from the date of passing the order.

Sarma said in these cases of corruption, the investigating agencies had not been able to file the chargesheets against the accused because the state government had not given the prosecution sanctions.

There is a provision in the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, which makes it mandatory for the investigating agency to take sanction from the government before prosecuting a public servant alleged to have committed an offence.

The act does not lay down a time limit for the government to take a decision on whether to grant prosecution sanction or not.

The special judge, however, passed yesterday’s order in the light of a landmark verdict given by the Supreme Court on February 1 this year in the 2G scam case, setting a deadline of four months for the government to decide the issue of giving sanction for prosecution of public servants facing corruption charges.

An apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K. Ganguly had prescribed a four-month deadline for to the government to decide whether to grant sanction for prosecution of a public servant, while mentioning that the sanction would be deemed to have been granted if the competent authority failed to take a decision within the period.

“In all 21 cases of corruption where the special judge has asked the investigating agencies to submit the chargesheets within 10 days, the request for grant of prosecution sanction is pending before the competent authority for more than four months and therefore, the court has considered the prosecution sanctions as deemed to be granted,” Sarma said.

“In some of these cases, the request for prosecution sanction is pending with the state government for several years,” he added.

The Supreme Court, in its order, had stated that at the end of the time limit, if no decision was taken, it would be deemed that sanction had been granted for prosecution and the prosecuting agency would proceed to file the chargesheet in the court to commence prosecution.