Jammu, Aug. 9 -- A division bench of the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court comprising chief justice Arun Palli and justice Rajnesh Oswal on Friday directed the ministry of home affairs to file an updated affidavit on the status of prosecution sanction of eight IAS officers, allegedly involved in the arms licence scam. The division bench (DB) directed deputy solicitor general of India Vishal Sharma, who appeared for the ministry of home affairs to file a specific affidavit/status report with regard to the final/formal decision for granting prosecution sanction with regard to eight IAS officers within a period of six weeks. These directions were passed by the DB in the public interest litigation titled Sheikh Mohd Shafi and Anr Versus Union of India and others in the scam. On April 24, the DB had issued detailed directions to J&K general administration department (GAD) to apprise the court of further progress in the context of sending prosecution proposals of IAS officers to home ministry. The Deputy solicitor general of India submitted that he has filed a latest status report on behalf of the home ministry. He mentioned that three separate communications dated May 27, July 4, and July 25, regarding proposals for grant of prosecution sanction against the eight IAS officers have since been received from the J&K government and in the status report, the names of the eight IAS officers are Pandurang Kondbarao Pole, M Raju, Yasha Mudgal, Jatinder Kumar Singh, Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, Niraj Kumar, Prasanna Ramaswamy and Ramesh Kumar. Sharma further submitted that after the receipt of the proposals for grant of prosecution sanction, the matter is being examined by the home ministry and the action as per the existing rules upon due consideration of the documents/comments received from the CBI and the J&K administration shall be taken. At this stage, the DB put up a specific query to Sharma with regard to the precise time the authorities would require to reach a final/formal decision for granting sanctions. Sharma submitted that in every likelihood, the said process should not take more than six weeks. The DB observed, "Be that as it may, he submits that he would furnish a specific affidavit/status report in this regard." However, senior additional advocate general Mohsin Qadri, who appeared for the government of J&K, submitted that since the government of J&K has complied with the directions of the Division Bench dated April 24, 2025, by forwarding the proposals of eight IAS officers for grant of prosecution sanction to the home ministry as such, the instant PIL be closed as it has served its purpose. On the other hand, Advocate SS Ahmed appearing for the petitioners submitted that the instant PIL involves the issue of national security and that the arms licences were allegedly issued by the delinquent IAS officers on monetary considerations in connivance with gun dealers. He also submitted that the scam was substantiated from the status report of the CBI where it was categorically observed that from 2012 to 2016, around 2.67 lakh arms licences were issued on extraneous considerations to non-deserving people. In March 2021, the J&K government granted prosecution sanction against KAS officers allegedly involved in the scam and since then the CBI is repeatedly requesting the J&K government to forward the prosecution proposals of the IAS officers. The DB directed the registry to re-notify the instant PIL on October 9....