Chandigarh, Feb. 21 -- The Union government has granted prosecution sanction against former Punjab chief secretary Vijay Kumar Janjua, a 1989-batch IAS officer, in a 16-year-old corruption case. The decision by the ministry of personnel on February 11 came just three months after the Punjab government, prompted by a stern high court directive, forwarded the case to the Centre. The Centre's order, a copy of which is with Hindustan Times, states: "The competent authority... considered that sufficient evidence has been brought on record to establish a prima facie case for granting sanction under Section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption Act." The case dates back to November 9, 2009, when the Punjab Vigilance Bureau caught Janjua, then director of industries and commerce, allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs.2 lakh from Ludhiana-based industrialist Tulsi Ram Mishra. Janjua served as the state's top bureaucrat for a year in 2022. While he is not the first Punjab chief secretary to face corruption allegations, he rose to the top post despite a pending vigilance case. Janjua, who retired in 2023, was appointed as the chairman of the Punjab Transparency and Accountability Commission by the AAP government, which eventually forwarded his prosecution file following judicial pressure. "This court cannot shut its eyes to the serious allegations against the petitioner. If this court allows the matter to be closed or brushed under the carpet at this stage, it would be failing in its duty to ensure that justice is not only done but seems to be done in cases involving corruption by high government functionaries," the bench of justice Anupinder Singh Grewal had observed while disposing of the plea in September 2023. However, it did not end there as Punjab and Centre dragged their feet in the case. In March 2024, Mishra filed a contempt petition in the high court. It was during these proceedings that the Centre on Friday (February 20, 2026) produced the prosecution sanction letter in the high court through advocate Shubam Thakur. The road to prosecution has been a legal see-saw. While then Punjab governor Shivraj Patil initially granted sanction in 2010, a trial court later discharged Janjua, ruling that the Centre, not the state, was the competent authority to sanction the prosecution of an IAS officer. A subsequent request to the Centre in 2014 was inexplicably withdrawn by the then Congress government in Punjab in March 2018. The tide turned in 2025 when the Punjab and Haryana high court imposed a penalty of Rs.50,000 on the state for failing to submit the case to the Centre. Following this, the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party government moved the file to the Union government on November 28, 2025....