In what seems to be eyewash in the name of granting autonomy to the CBI, the cabinet on Thursday cleared the suggestions made by Group of Ministers (GoM) constituted for the same.
The GoM completely ignored the suggestion for scrapping clause 6 (a) of the CrPC, which restricts the agency to investigate any officer above the rank of joint secretary without the concerned minister’s permission. According to agency reports, the GoM recommended to constitute a panel of retired judges instead for monitoring of investigations and increasing the CBI director’s financial powers. These have been given a go-ahead by the cabinet.
The GoM chaired by finance minister P Chidambaram and comprising law minister Kapil Sibal, home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, external affairs minister Salman Khurshid and minister of state for personnel V Narayanasamy had concluded its deliberations on Monday.
While the constitution of retired judges is targeted at ensuring that the probes by the agency are kept free of any influence, increasing the CBI director’s financial powers would result in decreasing his dependence on bureaucrats for funds. Following the approval by cabinet, now an affidavit in this regard would be placed before the Supreme Court which is scheduled to hear the matter on 10 July.
The government sources said it was decided against scrapping clause 6 (a) on the grounds that it would ‘lead to unprecedented policy paralysis.’ ‘No officer will want to take a decision if he is made to live in the fear of constant sword of an investigating agency. While taking any decision, an officer has to exercise some amount of discretion. Today, the environment is such that any such decision can be construed as abuse of position,’ a GoM member had said, adding that, ‘At times, a decision might just go wrong. There is a very thin line between a wrong decision and corruption. The spirit of the law says that an officer should not be penalised for taking an unintentional wrong decision.’
The government’s move to constitute the GoM came after scathing observations of the Supreme Court on the functioning of the CBI while hearing the coal block allocation case. The court had indicted the CBI for being a ‘caged parrot’ of its political masters while hearing a case related to alleged irregularities in coal blocks allocation.