In last 10 years, UPA govt prosecuted more IAS officers for corruption than NDA: RTI

New Delhi: An RTI query has revealed that a total of 65 IAS officers were prosecuted under the Manmohan Singh regime for corruption as opposed to 37 during the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Narendra Modi government in the last 10 years. The total stands at 102. The RTI application was filed by UP-based activist Nutan Thakur and covers the period between 2010 and 2019.

The prosecution denied in 21 cases

As per the list provided by the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT), a total of 102 prosecution sanctions related to 56 IAS officers were granted by DOPT from January 1, 2010 to March 26, 2019, while prosecution sanction was denied in 21 cases related to 20 IAS officers under Prevention of Corruption Act. Of the 21 cases of denial, 10 were by Manmohan Singh government and 11 by Narendra Modi government.

Maximum sanctions granted to these 7 officers

Maximum number of sanction have been granted against RK Srivastava of UT Cadre and Vinod Kumar of Orissa (12 cases each), KS Kropha of Assam (9 cases), KS Samria of Assam (6 cases) and Sanjeev Kumar of Haryana, Dr Pradeep Kumar of Jharkhand and Pradeep Shukla of Uttar Pradesh cadre (4 cases).

Other names include Yerra Srilakshmi and BP Acharya of Andhra Pradesh, Arvind and Tinoo Joshi of Madhya Pradesh, Rajendra Kumar of UT and Ashok Chawla of Gujarat Cadre.

Those who have been let off

Those denied prosecution sanction include KK Pant of Himachal Pradesh, Parimal Rai of UT, Sadakant Shukla of UP and Yogendra Tripathi of Karnataka cadre.

Initially, DOPT had denied this information to Thakur but Information Commissioner Divya Prakash Sinha had directed the information to be provided in larger public interest.