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HC questions delay in sanction against fodder scam accused

A monitoring bench of the Jharkhand high court has directed the Union finance secretary, personnel secretary, Lok Sabha secretary general and chief secretaries of Jharkhand and Bihar to file affidavits explaining the reasons for the delay in granting sanction against those accused in the fodder scam.

The bench -- comprising Chief Justice V K Gupta and Justice S J Mukhopadhyay -- issued the direction on Friday while monitoring the progress of the probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The CBI, while submitting its status report to the high court, said the slow progress of the investigations could be attributed to the lack of sanction from the competent authorities in submitting charge sheets in as many as four cases of the scam.

The court asked CBI counsel P P N Roy to furnish the Jharkhand Advocate General M M Bannerjee, Bihar government counsel A Alam and Union government counsel P K Prasad with a list of those accused in the scam within a week.

The CBI also maintained that the tardy progress was partly a result of non-cooperation from the accountant general's (Jharkhand) office, which was not furnishing original vouchers in a number of cases.

The bench directed the principal accountant general to see to it that the CBI gets all the necessary documents to complete the probe.

PTI

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