Chandrababu Naidu's Plea : Will Remand Order Be Valid If PC Act Offences Go Due To Lack Of Sec 17A Sanction? Supreme Court Asks AP CID

The Supreme Court on Tuesday, while hearing former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's plea, asked the Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department (AP CID) whether the order of a special court remanding the legislator to custody would be valid even if the offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act do not survive or are dropped on grounds of non-compliance with the prior sanction provision(Section 17A).A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi was hearing Naidu’s special leave petition challenging an order passed by the Andhra Pradesh High Court last month declining to quash a first information report (FIR) arraigning the ex-chief minister as one of the accused in the scam. Naidu was arrested in connection with this case on September 9 by the state’s crime investigation department (CID) and has been in custody since.The hearing last week revolved mainly around the applicability of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Section 17A, inserted in July 2018 by way of an amendment, mandates that the competent authority's prior sanction must be obtained before launching an investigation against a public servant. It is this provision that Naidu has cited to challenge his arrest by the Andhra Pradesh police's CID. The thrust of his argument is that the department did not obtain the governor's sanction before arraigning him as the 37th accused in the skill development scam case. On the first day of the hearing, the Justice Bose-led bench raised questions about whether the provision would apply to an offence predating the 2018 amendment that introduced it. The court also questioned whether Section 17A would be applicable when the FIR mentioned offences under both the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code, 1860. A battery of lawyers - including senior advocates Harish Salve, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Sidharth Luthra - appearing for Naidu, argued that Section 17A should be applicable since the inquiry commenced after the 2018 amendment, notwithstanding the date of the offence. On the contrary, the State, represented by Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, contended that the inquiry began before 2018. The hearing was finally adjourned with an instruction to the state government to provide the entire compilation of documents submitted to the high court.The debate over the interpretation of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act continued on the next date of the hearing, i.e., yesterday. During the hearing, Salve argued that Section 17A was introduced to prevent instances of "regime revenge." Maintaining that the inquiry against Naidu only began in 2021, the senior counsel asserted that Naidu would be entitled to the protective cover of Section 17A. In this connection, he relied on the union government's standard operating procedure on Section 17A to argue that prior approval was required at every stage, from inquiry to the investigation. In response to this, the court asked the senior counsel if it could adopt an interpretation of the section that would "defeat the objectives of the act". Salve countered this by saying that the interpretation would strengthen the legislation, allowing public servants to act freely and instituting a framework of accountability for the investigating agency.If PC Act is taken out, remand order by sessions court would be denuded of jurisdiction: Harish SalveToday, Salve reiterated that gubernatorial sanction was a prerequisite before even beginning the inquiry into the role of a public servant because of the operation of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Besides this, the senior counsel pointed out, "The remand report locates the period of the offence as between 2015 and 2019. Even the offence and the chain of events go beyond 2018."Salve further argued that the charges against the former chief minister under the Prevention of Corruption Act could not be separated from the criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, and other charges under the Indian Penal Code, 1860. This was in response to a question posed during the previous hearings about whether the criminal proceedings could continue against Naidu even if the offences under the PC Act were dropped or did not survive.In this connection, the senior counsel referred to the Supreme Court's ruling in Ebha Arjun Jadeja (2019), in which non-compliance with a provision mandating prior sanction was considered to be fatal to an inquiry under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act or 'TADA'. At the same time, in this case, the court allowed the investigation under the Arms Act to proceed, after noting that the basic material for constituting an offence both under the Arms Act and the TADA was identical. Salve argued -"Today, the FIR has been challenged, which is one common, rumbled-up FIR involving offences under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act. But the Prevention of Corruption Act cannot really be taken out qua...

Chandrababu Naidu's Plea : Will Remand Order Be Valid If PC Act Offences Go Due To Lack Of Sec 17A Sanction? Supreme Court Asks AP CID

Awstika Das

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