On 13 January 2026, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court delivered a split verdict on the constitutionality of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988—the provision that requires prior approval of the competent authority or the appropriate Government before any enquiry, inquiry or investigation can begin into a public servant’s decision or recommendation taken in the discharge of official duty. Justice B.V. Nagarathna held Section 17A to be unconstitutional, reasoning that it blocks scrutiny at the threshold and tilts the law towards unjustifiable immunity rather than accountability. Justice K.V. Viswanathan, by contrast, upheld the provision in principle as a legitimate filter to protect honest decision-making, but sought to cure the conflict-of-interest problem by insisting that screening cannot remain an executive permission slip and must be anchored in an independent ombudsman mechanism. With the Court divided, the issue now moves to a larger Bench—and with it, the deeper question of how India should design an anti-corruption regime that deters graft without paralysing governance.
A law born of fear—and a system tired of noise
Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, which applies to the CBI as well as the Vigilance Bureaus of State Governments whenever the provisions of the Act are attracted (save in trap or red-handed cases), is the legislative expression of two competing anxieties. One is administrative: honest decision-makers should not be crushed by malicious complaints, roving enquiries, and career-timed allegations. The other is constitutional: corruption must not be insulated by procedural gates controlled by the very executive whose conduct may be under scrutiny.
Inserted in 2018, Section 17A requires prior approval before any enquiry, inquiry, or investigation can begin into an alleged offence by a public servant where the allegation is relatable to a “decision taken” or “recommendation made” in the discharge of official duties. The above split verdict of the Supreme Court—one judge striking it down, the other upholding it through a restrictive reading—has now forced the issue onto a larger Bench. The larger Bench will not merely decide the fate of one provision; it will be asked, in effect, to decide whether India’s post-2018 anti-corruption design has become a sensible filter—or an early veto.
What Section 17A actually does
Section 17A creates a front-end barrier: no police officer can even commence an enquiry or investigation into an alleged PC Act offence linked to an official “decision” or “recommendation” without prior approval.
The statute attempts to keep the barrier from becoming absolute. First, it carves out the most direct corruption scenario: if an officer is caught on the spot accepting (or attempting to accept) an undue advantage, no prior approval is required. Second, it sets a decision timeline: the authority is expected to convey its decision within three months, extendable by one month for recorded reasons.
On paper, therefore, Section 17A is a time-bound screen designed to separate credible allegations from fishing expeditions—while leaving classic trap cases untouched.
Why Parliament brought it in
The 2018 amendment arrived after years of high-stakes governance decisions—allocation, licensing, procurement, infrastructure—being pulled into criminal investigation, often long after the policy moment had passed. The reform argument was that the old regime produced two distortions:
Chilling effect: officers began avoiding hard calls and innovative solutions, fearing that later political winds or commercial rivalries would convert discretionary decisions into criminal allegations.
Complaint inflation: agencies were routinely forced to “do something” even when allegations were vague, anonymous, or unsupported by particulars—summoning files, recording statements, and running preliminary enquiries that could themselves become punitive.
Section 17A was Parliament’s attempt to impose threshold discipline: if the allegation is essentially about a decision taken in official capacity, an approval gate should decide whether the criminal process should even begin.
The case for 17A: a practical gatekeeper
Supporters argue that without a filter, the investigative process itself becomes the punishment. Sensitive posts invite retaliation: an officer denies a favour; the complaint follows. An officer signs a procurement file; a future political opponent alleges “quid pro quo” without particulars. A preliminary enquiry—however “pre-FIR”—can still mean months of uncertainty, file raids, reputational harm, and service-career paralysis.
From this perspective, 17A is not an amnesty; it is a minimal administrative screen, confined to decisions taken in official capacity, time-bound, and expressly inapplicable to trap cases.
The case against 17A: an executive veto in constitutional clothing
Critics begin from the opposite fear: that the “filter” is placed precisely where it is least trustworthy—inside the executive chain. If prior approval is required even to begin preliminary verification, investigators may be denied the chance to gather the basic material required to form an informed view. More seriously, if the approving authority is the Government (or the authority competent to remove the officer), the executive gets a first say on whether its own decisions—or those of its trusted bureaucratic leadership—may even be examined.
In a system already familiar with sanction delays, 17A appears to add a new veto point earlier in time, and more lethal in effect.
The split verdict: one provision, two constitutional instincts
The Supreme Court’s split verdict, embodied in its comprehensive 271-page judgement, makes the conflict stark.
One view: 17A protects the corrupt more than the honest
On this reasoning, Section 17A undermines the very object of the PC Act by forestalling scrutiny at inception. Existing safeguards—especially the requirement of prosecution sanction—already protect honest officers; an additional pre-investigation barrier is disproportionate.
Equally important is the separation-of-powers objection: courts cannot “save” a provision by rewriting its institutional design. If Parliament vested the gate in the executive, it is not for judges to transplant it into a different body by interpretive creativity.
The other view: keep the filter, but remove the conflict of interest
The competing reasoning accepts the governance reality that produced 17A—harassment, hindsight criminalisation, and decision paralysis. It holds that prior approval is not per se unconstitutional. But it treats the identity of the approving authority as the provision’s fatal vulnerability. The solution, on this approach, is to preserve the gatekeeping function while shifting it away from the political executive to an independent ombudsman structure (Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in the States), with recorded reasons and institutional independence.
In short: preserve the filter, change the filter-holder.
The missing federal chapter: All-India Services serving in State affairs
This is where the debate becomes most constitutionally textured—and where a larger Bench must be especially careful.
A very large share of high-value State decision-making is driven by members of the All-India Services—IAS, IPS, IFoS—serving in connection with the affairs of a State. They operate within a dual framework: day-to-day governance under the State executive, but service architecture governed by an all-India constitutional and statutory design. That duality creates a practical federal puzzle: who is the gatekeeper at the front end (17A), and who is the gatekeeper at the back end (19), when the officer is AIS?
Front-end (Section 17A): “affairs of a State” points to the State Government
Section 17A, as drafted, ties the approval authority to where the officer was employed at the time of the alleged offence: if employed in connection with the affairs of a State, approval is of “that Government”. That structure appears straightforward for State service. But with AIS officers it can collide with the next stage.
Back-end (Section 19): sanction follows removal power—and removal power for AIS sits at the Centre
Section 19 governs the point at which a court can take cognisance. It makes prosecution sanction mandatory and structures the sanctioning authority around a mix of (i) whether the officer is serving in Union or State affairs and (ii) whether the officer is removable without the sanction of the relevant Government. In the All-India Services, the power to impose the severest service consequences—culminating in dismissal/removal—is anchored in the President acting through the Central Government’s service framework.
That creates a real-world oddity: a front-end approval that is often State-routed (because the decision was taken in State affairs) and a back-end prosecution sanction that can be Centre-anchored (because removal/dismissal authority ultimately lies with the President under AIS discipline architecture). Even where practice involves consultation and coordinated processing, the constitutional optics are unavoidable: a State-level act can end up needing central clearance to reach court.
Delay by design: files move between departments and levels, each guarding jurisdiction, each wary of being blamed for either protecting corruption or harassing officers.
Litigation by loophole: defence strategy shifts to procedural invalidity—wrong authority, wrong routing, wrong approval—before facts are tested.
Political leverage: Centre–State political divergence can turn gatekeeping into a bargaining chip, especially in high-profile State controversies involving AIS leadership.
If the larger Bench addresses Section 17A without squarely addressing AIS federalism, it will leave the most consequential category of “decision-based” governance in a procedural maze.
What the larger Bench should really settle
A binary answer—“17A valid” or “17A invalid”—is inadequate. The Court needs to lead a design conversation around four questions.
1) What counts as protected “official duty” decision-making?
The phrase “decision or recommendation in discharge of official duties” cannot become a magic cloak. The law must separate:
bona fide policy or administrative discretion from
acts plainly outside remit, mechanically illegal acts, or decisions infected by specific quid-pro-quo material.
If credible documentary leads exist, the gate cannot treat them as mere attacks on “policy”.
2) Who should be the gatekeeper—and what reasons must be recorded?
Whether the gate remains with Government, moves to Lokpal/Lokayukta, or is placed in some hybrid screening model, the approving authority must be required to record intelligible reasons and apply a known standard of scrutiny—so judicial review is meaningful, not ritual.
3) How should AIS federal overlap be handled without paralysis or protectionism?
The Court should articulate a clear routing principle for AIS officers: how the “State affairs” trigger under 17A aligns with the “removal power” logic under 19, and what consultative steps are mandatory (not optional) so that jurisdiction does not become a weapon. If the Court favours an independent screening authority, AIS cases are the strongest argument for it—because only independence reliably cuts through Centre–State conflicts.
4) What about ministers and legislators?
Ministers and legislators do not fit neatly into conventional “competent authority to remove” logic. Without a uniform constitutional rule, sanction/approval can become either an instrument of vendetta or a shield of impunity. The larger Bench has the opportunity to supply a principled, workable approach for high constitutional actors.
5) WhatTime limits and the consequence of silence
A fifth issue the larger Bench should resolve is what happens when the competent authority does not convey approval under Section 17A within the statutory three months (extendable by one month). The section is silent on the consequence of default, unlike the judicially developed “deemed sanction” approach that has evolved by analogy under Section 19. Some High Court reasoning suggests that the remedy lies in writ intervention to compel a decision, rather than automatic deemed approval. The larger Bench should settle whether delay results in deemed approval, a mandatory direction to decide, or some other consequence—so the approval gate cannot be converted into an instrument of indefinite paralysis.
Getting the balance right: the blueprint, not the slogan
The stakes go beyond Section 17A. Post-2018, the system is shaped by interacting filters: an initial approval gate (17A), a prosecution sanction gate (19), and a re-shaped offence architecture. In combination, these choices can either create a disciplined pipeline that targets serious corruption—or a multi-layered maze where the powerful never reach trial.
The balanced path is not “protect officers” versus “protect the public”. It is to design an anti-corruption regime where:
complaints supported by documents, specific facts, and credible leads—especially involving high-value decisions—move swiftly into serious investigation; and
frivolous, timed, or malicious allegations aimed at promotions or vendettas are rejected early, with recorded reasons and institutional accountability.
What we expect, looking ahead
Vigilance and CBI enquiries, even at the pre-FIR stage, can become stumbling blocks in a public servant’s career—not merely for promotion within a State, but also for empanelment at the Government of India level—because neither the State Government nor, in many cases, the Central Vigilance Commission is willing to issue the necessary “vigilance clearance” while any shadow of enquiry remains. At the next stage, an FIR—whether under a State vigilance case or a CBI RC—can trigger search, seizure, and even arrest, with official and personal papers taken into custody, often causing traumatic disruption to family life, reputation, and professional standing. These proceedings can also linger long after retirement, with the individual dragged through years of uncertainty and, at times, facing the withholding of retiral benefits.
A striking asymmetry follows. Career public servants can be effectively “punished” by process alone—stalled, side-lined, and professionally tainted—without any finding of guilt, while political personalities, especially those contesting elections, often suffer no comparable disability during the pendency of enquiries or investigations. Indeed, for some, the very pendency of proceedings can be converted into political capital: the rhetoric of vendetta and witch-hunt can galvanise support, harden constituencies, and even yield electoral dividends. The result is a system in which the costs of suspicion fall disproportionately on administrators, while political actors can sometimes treat allegations as fuel for mobilisation.
No anti-corruption framework, however well-intentioned, should be allowed to degenerate into a witch-hunt in which the process becomes the punishment—and in which both the system and society are tempted to label an individual “corrupt” merely because a flimsy complaint has reopened a bona fide decision, or at most an error of judgement, without any demonstrable criminality. The danger is compounded when decisions taken under complex governing statutes, special laws, and Rules of Business are reopened decades later through enquiries driven at the inspectorate level, by officers who may have little grasp of the legal and administrative architecture that originally shaped the decision. The purpose of the law is not to criminalise governance by hindsight, but to identify and punish proven corruption.
If the larger Bench can move the debate from slogans to design—especially by confronting the federal complexity of the All-India Services—it can turn the Section 17A controversy into a rare opportunity: to restore decisional courage in administration while strengthening the credibility of anti-corruption enforcement, in a manner that is fair, just, and equitable to all stakeholders.