Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told the CBI where it stands in its 50th year. There has been a debate going on regarding the agency’s autonomy and what its proper distance should be from the executive. The CBI has often shown political pliability and a proneness to be used by successive governments. The coal block allocation investigation for instance calls for freedom from political interference. The Prime Minister admitted that there were sometimes top-level oversight and lapses in administrative supervision by the executive. The CBI, however, is answerable to the executive and consequently its operational autonomy often becomes a myth. The Prime Minister was firm about redrawing the lines on another front. Police agencies should avoid working on hunches about wrongdoing. It should scrupulously make an enquiry about the rationale behind executive decisions. Honest officials should not be wrongly targeted and their honest action should not be mistaken for criminal action. If the CBI does not give up its tendency to operate on these lines, top level decision-making may be paralyzed. It is of course a welcome development that the verdict of the Gauhati High Court inactivating the CBI has been promptly stayed by the Supreme Court.
Corruption has been seething across the country throughout the tenure of the UPA II government. Its decisions which seem dubious have perhaps occasionally been put through the scanner. However, that may have been done even in cases where the benefit of the doubt was called for. The Prime Minister is right about the need to restore perspective. But the question arises about whether his government has in the case of most alleged scams proved itself worthy of such detailed scrutiny.