National: The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up Uttar Pradesh Prison Administration Department's Principal Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh over the matter of remission of prisoners in the court. The apex court said that it will not tolerate any IAS officer lying before the court and changing his stand as per his convenience.

A bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Augustine George Masih said that the stand taken by Rajesh Kumar Singh in his affidavit dated August 14 is completely different from his statements recorded in the order of this court dated August 12.

"Certain statements made in the affidavit, including those in clause (g) of paragraph five of the affidavit, appear to be false," the bench said. Rajesh Kumar Singh had on August 12 argued that the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's office had delayed the disposal of a file related to remission of sentence of a convict due to the model code of conduct in force in the state due to the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.

Some officers must go to jail

The bench said, some officials will have to go to jail, otherwise this conduct will not stop. The state will have to take action against them. Rajesh Kumar Singh said that he inadvertently said that due to the model code of conduct, the Chief Minister's Secretariat did not accept files related to remission of sentence.