Law takes its own course, indeed. That is why former Punjab Chief Secretary Vijay Kumar Janjua (IAS:1989:PB) is finally going to face prosecution after a long legal sea-saw in a 17-year-old corruption case. The Union Government granted prosecution sanction against him recently, within just three months after the Punjab govt forwarded the case to it following a stern directive from the High Court.
Janjua retired in 2023 but was rehabilitated as the chairman of the Punjab Transparency and Accountability Commission by the Bhagwant Mann govt.
Though Janjua is not the first Chief Secretary of the state to face corruption allegations, he managed to rise to the top post despite a pending vigilance case.
It was in 2009 when the Punjab Vigilance Bureau caught him allegedly accepting a bribe of ₹2 lakh from a Ludhiana-based industrialist. He was then posted as Director of Industries and Commerce under the Punjab govt.
The then Punjab Governor, Shivraj Patil, initially granted sanction to prosecute him in 2010, but a trial court later discharged him on the ground that it was the Centre, not the state, that was the competent authority to sanction the prosecution of an IAS officer. A subsequent request made to the Centre in 2014 was inexplicably withdrawn by the then Congress government in the state in March 2018.
But the tide turned in 2025 when the Punjab and Haryana High Court imposed a penalty of ₹50,000 on the state for failing to submit the case to the Centre for prosecution and asked it to do it immediately.
Following this stern directive, the state government forwarded the file to the Centre on November 28, 2025, leading to the Union Govt granting its sanction to prosecute Janjua.
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