The competent authority cannot review an earlier decision and grant fresh sanction without any new or fresh material, as it is impermissible in law.

JUDGMENT

Sunil B. Shukre, J. - Heard. Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith.

2. Heard finally by consent of the learned counsel appearing for the parties.

3. The petitioner was, during the period when the allegations regarding commission of various criminal acts relating to misappropriation of Government money and cheating the Government by falsely making inflated estimates prepared for completion of various irrigation projects, which acts have been broadly called as "irrigation scam", working as Senior Divisional Account Officer and was entrusted with the duty of clearing the bills submitted from time to time by the Engineers and Officers involved in these irrigation projects. Several public interests litigations were filed praying for issuance of various directions to the authorities including the ones relating to registration of offences and carrying out of the investigation. These P.I.Ls. were registered as P.I.L. Nos.12 of 2016, 140 of 2016, 141 of 2016, 172 of 2016 and 173 of 2016. In these matters, various directions were issued by the Bench and one of the directions related to completion of the criminal investigation initiated against various officers suspected to be involved in the projects when it was noticed by the Bench that various crimes were already registered into which the investigation was going on. So far as the petitioner is concerned, five crimes, in this irrigation scam, came to be registered against him and they were crime Numbers 540 of 2017, 542 of 2017, 67 of 2018, 70 of 2018 and 251 of 2018. First of these two crimes were registered for offences punishable under Sections 13(1), 13(1)(c)(d) and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 420 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code. Crime Numbers 67 and 70 of 2018 were registered only under the aforestated provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act and so also the crime No.251 of 2018.

4. As directed by the Division Bench, dealing with the public interest litigation matters, investigation insofar as this petitioner is concerned was completed and a stage arose for seeking sanction of the competent authority i.e. removing authority for prosecution of the petitioner in terms of Section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Investigating Officer forwarded to the authority copies of all the papers of investigation and made a request for granting sanction for prosecution of the petitioner for the aforestated offences. After considering the material available on record, the competent authority who was the Accountant General, declined to grant sanction. The orders of refusal to grant sanction in Crime Nos. 540 of 2017, 542 of 2017 and 70 of 2018 came to be passed on 14.12.2018 while orders declining such sanction in crime Nos. 67 of 2018 and 251 of 2018 came to be passed on 07.12.2018 and and 09.01.2019 respectively.

5. Later on, it was felt by the investigating officer that there was a need for taking a fresh look at the orders refusing to grant sanction. So, the investigating officer wrote another letter to the competent authority for reconsideration of the matter and according of the sanction upon such fresh consideration. Once again, necessary material was forwarded to the competent authority. The competent authority, this time granted the sanction to prosecute the petitioner in all the aforestated five crimes by orders passed on 17.01.2019. Being aggrieved by the same, the petitioner is before this Court questioning the legality of the orders freshly passed on 17.01.2019.

6. Shri Rajnish Vyas, learned counsel for the petitioner submits that bare perusal of the fresh orders dated 17.01.2019 would show that what the competent authority has actually done in the present case is review of the earlier orders and not really something like giving fresh consideration to the issue in the light of an additional material which may have been discovered during the course of the further investigation. He further submits that in fact, after the orders