New Delhi:
Hours before an all-party meet on the Lokpal Bill, the head of the CBI, AP Singh, has met the Prime Minister, reportedly to convey his concerns about the investigating agency's future.
The new bill creates a nine-member ombudsman agency that will investigate charges of corruption among government servants. For these cases, it will use the CBI; but how much control the Lokpal should have over the CBI has now become the headline - and perhaps the only point of dissent - among those involved in the Lokpal debate.
Sources say that the CBI chief told the PM that it is willing to accept the Lokpal as its new boss, but the ombudsman must then be the body with supervisory powers over the CBI. The CBI also wants all administrative, financial and legal powers to be vested in the agency's chief.
This seems to match the blueprint suggested by the BJP. The opposition party has said that what it wants is investigative independence for the agency, and its complete disassociation from the government. So the director of the CBI must be appointed independently and not by the government, the BJP says. "If the CBI is controlled by the government," said the BJP's Arun Jaitley to NDTV, "it will become a toy. Because the investigating arm of the Lokpal will be under the government." Mr Jaitley said that his party wants the administrative functions of the CBI to be brought under the Lokpal's ambit. Sources say the CBI chief told the PM that any attempts to bifurcate the agency will be damaging.
Activist Anna Hazare and others who have been championing the need for a strong Lokpal want the ombudsman to be the CBI's boss. Unless this is sanctioned, they argue, the Lokpal will serve as nothing more than a post office, receiving complaints from the public and then passing them onto the CBI. But even Team Anna disagrees with the role of the CBI as envisaged by a parliamentary committee that submitted its report on the Lokpal Bill last week.
Though the CBI denies it, reliable sources confirm that Team Anna met with representatives of the investigating agency earlier today. They allegedly talked about the committee's proposal to have the Lokpal conduct a preliminary inquiry before assigning a complaint of corruption to the CBI. Anna's close aide, Arvind Kejriwal, said this morning that this process "may warn the corrupt and allow him to protect himself before a raid takes place". He accused the government of using Anna's campaign to dilute the CBI's powers.
The CBI is also opposing the parliamentary committee's recommendation that its closure or final reports on a case to be approved by the Lokpal - a valid objection, according to the BJP. Mr Jaitley said that at this evening's meeting with the PM, the BJP will stress the urgent need to change how the Director of the CBI and other senior officers are appointed. Currently, these officers are selected by the government and the CBI's administrative control lies with the Department of Personnel and Training in the government.