1. In all these writ petitions, the petitioners who are public servants are seeking the relief of quashing of their chargesheets filed in Court or FIR filed with the jurisdictional police and in cases where the Court has taken cognizance of the offences and issued process, they want all such proceedings to be quashed on the ground that sanction under Section 19 of the prevention of Corruption Act, 1998 is not granted/refused.

2. W.P. Nos. 2608/07, 3733/07, and 3855/07 are cases where chargesheets are filed without sanction, still the Court has taken cognizance of the offence and issued process to the accused.

3. In W.P. Nos. 3368/07, 3833/07, 3760/07, 4025/07 and 4026/07 the sanction sought for is expressly refused, still chargesheet are filed, the Court has taken cognizance of the offence and issued process to the accused.

4. At the time of hearing all these writ petitions, the learned Counsel appearing for the parties submitted that it would be appropriate for this Court to decide the question of necessity of sanction as a preliminary point, so that depending on the answer to the said question, the cases could be decided on merits separately. Therefore, in all these ca