‘Honest officials to be protected from vexatious prosecution’
Honest officials must be protected from vexatious prosecution for India to have the entrepreneurial State it sorely needs, according to the Economic Survey 2025-26 tabled in the Parliament on Thursday. It also said legal and institutional frameworks must codify protection for good-faith decision-making and clearly separate error from corruption.
The survey, tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, suggested re-orientation of the approach of agencies like the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG), besides a balance in laws relating to the prosecution of public servants.
It said not every adverse outcome is a failure of intent or competence, as some are failures of hypotheses, timing, coordination and temporal dimension of accountability. “Ex ante (based on forecasts) clarity and ex post proportionality matter more than real-time scrutiny. This may require an explicit re-orientation of the approach of agencies like the Comptroller & Auditor General and of vigilance systems.
It will also need an appropriate balance in laws relating to the prosecution of public servants,” the survey said. For India to have the entrepreneurial state it sorely needs, honest officials must be protected from vexatious prosecution, it said in a chapter titled “Building strategic resilience and strategic indispensability: The role of the State, the private sector and the citizens”.
