By Anirudh Prakash
The apex court has expressed its unhappiness over the proposals suggested by the CBI for its autonomy. The CBI’s proposals appear to have been prepared by the central government and therefore make no radical departure from the existing arrangements.
These proposals are well in tune with the central government’s proposals that were drafted by a group of ministers and have been passed by the cabinet. The cabinet proposals include a collegium system to appoint the agency’s director and an oversight panel to ensure impartiality of investigations. The collegium will comprise the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India. In a way, this appears some advance from the old system in which the central government alone decided who was to be CBI director. It might be recalled that the collegium was similar to that proposed in the Lokpal bill which is awaiting a discussion in Parliament.
The oversight panel also appeared as some advance. Over the past few years in several cases, the Supreme Court took the initiative and monitored CBI investigations in order to remove the possibility of the central government influencing the course of inquiry, particularly in what were known as “politically sensitive” cases. According to the cabinet proposal, the oversight committee will comprise three retired judges. The issue of taking away the powers of oversight from the government had caught public attention during the Anna Hazare anti-corruption upsurge. An idea that gained ground was that the investigation and prosecution wings of the CBI be put under the Lokpal. The CBI expressed its opposition to idea, saying that corruption and other criminal activities were very often interlinked. As the Lokpal was going to be anti-graft watchdog, it would not be possible for it to superintend investigations by CBI when it was becoming increasingly difficult to compartmentalize graft from other criminal activities. The CBI cited UP’s ` 2,000-crore National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam which involved a series of murders besides corruption. There were similar overlaps in cases of corruption and white collar crime with investigations involving corporate entities as well.
The CBI pitch was for more autonomy in investigation and prosecution. However, the proposals it has submitted, and the proposals that the central government has made are not going to enhance CBI’s autonomy. One of the major concerns of the Supreme Court during the past several years has been to ensure that the process of investigation was not influenced by any government department. Even when the apex court judges were monitoring certain “politically sensitive” cases, they were just monitoring the investigations and not directing the CBI how to proceed on their investigations. The apex court always maintained that the investigations must be left entirely to the CBI.
And obviously this was what the apex court judges were hoping the central government to do when they directed them to draft a law to given CBI autonomy. But the proposals of the government and CBI have disappointed the court. For there is no assurance of CBI enjoying independence in conducting investigations. There is no insulation of the CBI from the interference by ministers and officials as we saw in Coalgate. Under the existing system, the CBI is under the control of the government at all stages: from filing a complaint to investigating it to prosecuting the guilty.
The central question raised by the apex court was to provide autonomy to the CBI, and all the government has done is to suggest changes in the system of appointment of the director. That was hardly the point, for whoever is appointed, he will have to function under government control. The question was how much independently of the government can the director function and there are no changes suggested in this direction at all. The main debate is about government’s hold on the CBI which makes it easy for them to protect or harass politicians according to their will. There is no proposal made to remove the possibility of this beyond all doubts. There is nothing in the recommendations to suggest that the director can enjoy freedom from government control on institution, investigation and prosecution of cases. The CBI has been in chains. The central government and CBI’s autonomy proposals are merely cosmetic. The CBI is destined to remain in chains. INAV