Sanction granted by PMO to prosecute two IAS officers in Tamil Nadu, Madras High Court told

Madras High Court. File | Photo Credit: K. Pichumani

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has accorded sanction to prosecute two IAS officers, K.S. Kandasamy and K. Vijaya Karthikeyan, under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, in connection with the ₹98.25-crore corporation tender irregularities case, primarily registered against former AIADMK Minister S.P. Velumani, the Madras High Court was told on Thursday (November 12, 2026).

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh recorded the submission made by Additional Solicitor General A.R.L. Sundaresan, assisted by Central government senior panel counsel V. Chandrasekar, and directed the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) to proceed with the process of filing the charge sheet against all the accused in the corruption case pending for long.

Referring to the long-drawn process involved in obtaining sanction to prosecute the two IAS officers, ever since the complainant Jayaram Venkatesan of Arappor Iyakkam filed a contempt of court petition against the DVAC officials in 2025, the judge said: “It is a classic case of how much of effort had to be put in to obtain sanction to prosecute IAS officers in criminal cases.”

He also said: “The wheels (of law enforcement) move faster against poor people, but for influential people, the wheels hardly move.” The judge, last year, issued a series of directions to the State government to send the files to the Centre and then suo motu impleaded the Department of Personnel and Tranining (DoPT) in New Delhi in order to make it expedite the process of obtaining sanction.

After the ASG submitted a copy of the sanction order before the court on Thursday, the judge ordered the deletion of the DoPT from the array of respondents since it was not a necessary party in the contempt proceedings any more. He decided to keep the contempt petition pending only for the purpose of monitoring the further progress to be made by the DVAC.

In the contempt petition filed through its counsel V. Suresh, Arappor Iyakkam told the court that its complaint was related to irregularities in the award of Greater Chennai and Coimbatore municipal corporation civil contracts issued between 2014 and 2018 when Mr. Velumani served as the Minister for Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department during the AIADMK rule.

The DVAC registered a First Information Report (FIR), on the basis of the complaint, in 2021 and completed the probe a few years later. On February 12, 2024, then Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Speaker M. Appavu granted sanction to prosecute Mr. Velumani. However, as there was a delay in obtaining sanction to prosecute the two IAS officers, Arappor Iyakkam had filed the contempt petition last year.

Following continuous nudging by the High Court, the Tamil Nadu government forwarded its proposal for grant of sanction to the DoPT along with voluminous documents, which had to be translated from Tamil to English. Thereafer, on September 16, 2026, Sushil Kumar Patel, Joint Secretary, DoPT, told Justice Venkatesh that the PMO was the competent authority to grant sanction to prosecute IAS officers.

He said, the DoPT had sent the files to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for its remarks and that it would forward the files to the PMO after receipt of the CVC’s remarks. Then, the officer had also assured the court that the entire process of obtaining sanction would be completed within two months.

Published - November 12, 2026 05:02 pm IST