Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, a member of the committee that selects the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has dashed off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, complaining the panel has been bypassed in the appointment of Rakesh Asthana, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer, as the agency’s interim/acting chief.
Meantime, the Supreme Court has also agreed to hear a petition challenging the appointment of Mr. Asthana at the CBI’s helm. A Bench led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur on Wednesday scheduled a petition filed by the NGO Common Cause, represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, to be heard on December 9.
The petition contends that the appointment of Mr. Asthana was made in violation of the mandatory conditions imposed by the Supreme Court in the Vineet Narain case and Section 4A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946.
It said the Centre made the appointment in total defiance of the statutory procedure that the name of CBI director should be finalised by a panel of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the single largest party in the Lok Sabha (in case there is no Leader of Opposition) and the Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court judge.
In his letter, Mr. Kharge said “the entire process has been vitiated and is being manipulated to pre-empt the decision to be arrived at in the meeting of the selection committee”. “The government failed to convene the meeting. It now appears that this was done deliberately to facilitate giving the charge of the post of CBI director to an officiating junior officer by hurriedly transferring Special Director R.K. Dutta, the senior-most officer, as Special Secretary to the Ministry of Home Affairs, on 30th November, 2016,” the letter said.
The government has since said it would respond soon to Mr. Kharge’s letter, explaining why the selection committee did not meet.
As a 1984 batch IPS officer, Mr. Asthana is too junior, sources say, to even make it to a panel of possible candidates for the CBI chief to replace Mr. Anil Sinha, who retired last week.
In the past, Mr. Asthana has headed a special investigation team (SIT) that probed the Godhra train burning in which 59 Hindu activists were charred to death near the Godhra railway station in February 2002.
