The wheel of justice has begun to roll in Tamil Nadu’s ₹98.25-crore corporation tender scam case with the intervention of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), as after a long-drawn process, the sanction to prosecute two IAS officers, K.S. Kandasamy (IAS:2009:TN) and K. Vijaya Karthikeyan (IAS:2011:TN), has been granted by it. The Madras High Court, which is hearing a contempt case against the duo, was informed about it on Thursday (November 12, 2026).
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh has now directed the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) to begin the process of filing the charge sheet against all the accused in the long-pending corruption case.
After getting a copy of the sanction order, the judge ordered the deletion of the DoPT from the array of respondents since it was not a necessary party in the contempt proceedings.
It was in 2025 when the complainant Jayaram Venkatesan of Arappor Iyakkam had filed a contempt of court petition against the DVAC officials. The judge lamented at the delay, saying it is a classic case of how much of effort had to be put in to obtain sanction to prosecute IAS officers in criminal cases.
The judge had earlier issued a series of directions to the state govt to send the files to the Centre and then suo motu impleaded the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) under the Union Govt in order to make it speed up the process of obtaining sanction.
In the contempt petition, Arappor Iyakkam told the court that its complaint was related to irregularities in the award of Greater Chennai and Coimbatore municipal corporation civil contracts issued between 2014 and 2018 when S P Velumani served as the Minister for Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department during the AIADMK rule.
The DVAC registered an FIR on the basis of the complaint in 2021 and completed the probe a few years later. But no sanction was granted to prosecute the two IAS officers, following which Arappor Iyakkam filed the contempt petition last year.
After continued nudging by the High Court, the Tamil Nadu govt forwarded its proposal for grant of sanction to the DoPT along with voluminous documents, which had to be translated from Tamil to English.
Finally, on September 16, this year, DoPT’s Joint Secretary told Justice Venkatesh that the PMO was the competent authority to grant sanction to prosecute IAS officers. He said the DoPT had sent the files to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for its remarks and that it would forward the files to the PMO after receipt of the CVC’s remarks. The court had been assured that the entire process of obtaining sanction would be completed within two months. It is now done.
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