Public Officials Lose Immunity In Pre-2014 Corruption Cases: SC

Supreme Court Constitution Bench on Monday said its 2014 judgment striking down the provision that required investigating officials to take prior sanction to arrest corrupt public officials “will apply retrospectively”. The top court clarified that section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act was unconstitutional and “is held to be not in force from the date of its insertion on September 11, 2003”.

This means that Central government officials no longer have immunity from coercive action in corruption cases. The top court’s judgment comes seven years after it was referred to the Constitution Bench. The verdict is significant in the run-up to the general elections slated for 2024.

The judgment was given by a Constitution Bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, AS Oka, Vikram Nath, and JK Maheshwari. Justice Nath pronounced the order in open court.

The detailed verdict is yet to be uploaded online.

The NDA government in 2003 introduced Section 6A to the DSPE Act, 1946 through Section 26 of the Central Vigilance Commission Act (CVCA). Arun Jaitley, the law minister at the time, had defended the law saying that officials in decision-making positions taking vital decisions and exercising discretion needed protection from frivolous complaints.

The now struck-down law required investigating agencies to take the Centre’s prior permission to arrest corrupt central government officials with a rank of joint secretary and above.

However, the Supreme Court Constitution Bench in the 2014 Subramanian Swamy case struck down section 6A saying “status or position” could not shield corrupt officials level of joint secretary and above from unimpeded probe in corruption cases. At the time, the top court observed that Section 6A was “discriminatory” and it “impedes tracking down the corrupt senior bureaucrats”.

The court had said that “the protection in Section 6A has the propensity of shielding the corrupt”. The bench at the time added that the law “suffers from the vice of classifying offenders differently for treatment thereunder for inquiry and investigation of offenses, according to their status in life”.