New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said that a CBI inquiry should not be ordered by the constitutional courts in a routine manner and must be exercised sparingly and cautiously. A bench of justices J K Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi made the observations while setting aside an order of the Allahabad High Court which directed a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in the recruitment process for the Uttar Pradesh legislative council staff. The top court said the exercise of inherent powers to direct the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate must be exercised sparingly, cautiously, and only in exceptional situations. "This court has consistently cautioned that a CBI investigation should not be directed as a matter of routine or merely because a party casts certain aspersions or harbours a subjective lack of confidence in the state police. "The concerned court must be satisfied that the material placed prima facie discloses commission of offences and necessitates a CBI investigation to ensure the fundamental right to a fair and impartial investigation, or where the complexity, scale, or national ramification of such allegations demands expertise of a central agency," the bench said.
The apex court said an order directing an investigation to be carried out by the CBI should be treated as a measure of last resort, justified only when the constitutional court is convinced that the integrity of the process has been compromised. "Such compelling circumstances may typically arise when the materials brought in notice of the court prima facie point towards systemic failure, the involvement of high-ranking state officials or politically influential persons, or when the local police's conduct itself creates a reasonable doubt in the minds of the citizenry regarding their ability to conduct a neutral probe. "In the absence of such compelling factors, the principle of judicial restraint demands that the court must refrain from interfering," the bench said. The top court said constitutional courts must exercise some degree of judicial restraint in unnecessarily burdening a specialised central agency with matters that do not satisfy the threshold of an exceptional case.