If the assessee is able to make out that cognizance was not justified and as per law they can challenge and question the summoning order by way of petition u/s 397 read with Section 401 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 or if permissible, by way of a petition under Section 482 of the Code . Referring various case laws the Court observed that, following principles can be culled out:
(a) It is incumbent on the prosecution to prove that the valid sanction has been granted by the sanctioning authority after being satisfied that a case for sanction has been made out.
(b) The sanction order may expressly show that the sanctioning authority has perused the material placed before it and, after consideration of the circumstances, has granted sanction for prosecution.
(c) The prosecution may prove by adducing the evidence that the material was placed before the sanctioning authority and its satisfaction was arrived at upon perusal of the material placed before it.
(d) Grant of sanction is only an administrative function and the sanctioning authority is required to prima facie reach the satisfaction that relevant facts would constitute the offence.
(e) The adequacy of material placed before the sanctioning authority cannot be gone into by the court as it does not sit in appeal over the sanction order.
(f) If the sanctioning authority has perused all the materials placed before it and some of them have not been proved that would not vitiate the order of sanction.
(g) The order of sanction is a prerequisite as it is intended to provide a safeguard to a public servant against frivolous and vexatious litigants, but simultaneously an order of sanction should not be construed in a pedantic manner and there should not be a hyper-technical approach to test its validity.” . ( WP. No. 3964/2017, dt. 12.03.2018)