BY IANS,
Lucknow: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court Thursday rapped the Akhilesh Yadav government for delaying sanction for prosecution of accused doctors and officials in the multi-crore rupee National Rural Health Mission scam.
The court told the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to wrap up the probe in the case within 20 days.
It also directed the state government to sanction the prosecution of the accsued government servants without further delay.
After summoning Principal Secretary (Health) Sanjay Agarwal, a bench of Justice Imtiaz Murtaza and Justice Ashvani Kumar Singh asked him why the government was dilly-dallying on the go-ahead for prosecution of the accused officials.
The court directed the principal secretary to ensure that the sanction was granted and and sought a report Aug 29.
The court directed the CBI to present before it a detailed progress report on the investigations into the scam and the murder of two chief medical officers.
The CBI had sent a request letter to the Uttar Pradesh government May 23 seeking prosecution of 22 doctors and Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Pradeep Shukla in the scam.
But the files since then have been shuttling between the health and the law department.
Proximity of the accused to political masters was the stumbling block, official sources said.
Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav Wednesday said that “some innocent people have been charged in the scam”.
This has led to the speculation that the state government was unwilling to give the CBI the green signal to prosecute the officials.