New Delhi:
The Supreme Court today said that the law will have to be amended to give more autonomy to the Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI and that Parliament will ultimately have to debate and approve suggestions made by the Centre to free the agency from political control.
But it has asked why the CBI should need the government's sanction to prosecute officials and public servants, saying, "The supervision of the CBI is entrusted with the CVC. The Centre has no role. How can the CBI say government permission is needed for sanction? We need to discuss this."
The court was looking into an affidavit that it had asked the Centre to file on functional autonomy for the investigating agency. The government's proposal in its 44-page affidavit that the Director of the CBI will be selected by a three-member panel comprising the Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of India has found favour with the court.
But it has also questioned the CBI being denied the right to hire its own lawyers, which would have given it greater autonomy in politically-sensitive investigations.
The court observed today, "We don't want a situation where the CBI faces reluctance in saying what they feel because a government lawyer is representing them." It noted that in the case at hand, a top government officer, an Additional Solicitor General, is representing the CBI.
The court had ordered the Centre to suggest ways the CBI could be made autonomous in May this year, accusing the government of turning the agency into "a caged parrot speaking in its master's voice". It was furious that a status report on investigations into the coal block allocations, which the CBI was meant to share with only the court, was vetted by then Law Minister
Ashwani Kumar and two government officials.
The Supreme Court is monitoring the CBI's coal inquiry, which is especially sensitive for the government because for some of the years under scrutiny, the Prime Minister held direct charge of the Coal Ministry. That has led to the opposition demanding his resignation.