New Delhi: The Supreme Court asked Friday the Centre why it has not appointed a regular CBI director and said it was ‘averse; to the appointment of an interim chief for the agency for a long period.
A bench comprising justices Arun Mishra and Naveen Sinha said the post of CBI director was sensitive and the government should have appointed a regular director by now.
Attorney General KK Venugopal told the court that a high-powered committee, headed by the Prime Minister, will hold a meeting Friday to select a new CBI director. He also told the court that the Centre had taken the approval of the panel before appointing IPS officer M Nageswara Rao as the interim CBI director.
Taking account of the Attorney General’s submissions that the committee will hold a meeting Friday, the apex court posted the matter for hearing February 6.
The bench was hearing a petition of NGO Common Cause challenging the appointment of Rao as interim CBI Director.
During the hearing the bench said the process of appointing a CBI director should have been over by now. It also told the Attorney General that the new CBI director who would be appointed must ‘trace the movements of files’ during the period when former CBI chief Alok Kumar Verma was reinstated to the post for two days.
It should be stated here that the last meeting of the committee took place January 24 but it remained ‘inconclusive’.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioner NGO, told the bench that the apex court must also look into the aspect of transparency in the process of appointing the CBI director.
“You want an immediate appointment. Let us stop there. Let the appointment be made first. If you have any grievance that the process is not followed and transparency was not there then you can challenge it later,” the bench told Bhushan.
The top court Thursday had set up a fresh bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra to hear the petition after Justice NV Ramana had recused himself from hearing it citing social reasons.
He became the third judge of the apex court to recuse himself from hearing the matter after Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and the second senior-most judge in the top court Justice AK Sikri. Both had recused themselves earlier from adjudicating the case.
PTI