BNSS has the concept of deemed sanction
The Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), unlike the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC), provides for the concept of deemed sanction for prosecuting a public servant.
The Section 218 (1) of the BNSS (equivalent to Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973) makes a provision of deemed sanction. It says if the sanction is not received to prosecute the public servant within 120 days, the sanction would be considered as deemed sanction to prosecute the public servant.
BNSS Section on deemed sanction
The proviso to the Section 218 (1) BNSS reads as follows: –
“Provided further that such Government shall take a decision within a period of one hundred and twenty days from the date of the receipt of the request for sanction and in case it fails to do so, the sanction shall be deemed to have been accorded by such Government”.
CrPC provides for no such deemed sanction
But in CrPC, the failure of the sanctioning authority to provide sanction within the stipulated time would not make the sanction a deemed sanction because such a concept doesn’t exist under Section 197 of CrPC, says the Supreme Court ( SC) in Suneeti Toteja v State of UP & Another [2025 INSC 267].
Parties misunderstood the following cases on this
The SC states the above proposition when the complainant and prosecution in the above case relied on the cases of Vineet Narain v Union of India [AIR 1998 SC 889], and Subramanian Swamy v Manmohan Singh [(2012) 3 SCC 64] contending that if the sanction was not granted within the stipulated time, it should be deemed to have been granted under Section 197 of the CrPC.
Those cases made a proposal on the matter but it was never accepted by the law makers.
