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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Not easy for CBI to be independent agency -Aman Sharma

Not easy for CBI to be independent agency -Aman Sharma

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published Published on May 10, 2013   modified Modified on May 10, 2013
-The Economic Times


The Supreme Court may have called upon the " caged parrot" Central Bureau of Investigation to free itself from the interference of the executive, but the dependence of the agency on its several masters in the government makes it easier said than done.

The ministries of home, personnel, law and finance can all be construed as the masters of CBI in one way or the other, given the decisive control they exercise over the country's premier investigating agency. Besides, all ministries have an implicit power over CBI since the agency needs the sanction of the ministry concerned to prosecute any government official.

"If the home minister calls the CBI director for a meeting, he cannot say no. CBI is completely dependent on the home ministry for deputation of IPS officers to CBI who constitute a majority of the senior investigative workforce," a senior CBI official explained to ET. The official added that the personnel ministry and the finance ministry jointly decide on CBI's budget - this year, the budget allocated to the agency was Rs 387 crore against the demand for Rs 425 crore.

"CBI is not like the Comptroller and Auditor General or the Election Commission who draw their funds from the Consolidated Fund of India and hence have nothing to do with the government," said the official, who did not wish to be named.

The law ministry provides lawyers for CBI to fight its cases and, hence, it is the government that determines the quality of legal service at CBI's disposal during trial, the official adds. "In the coal scam case, the CBI director chose to go for a private lawyer to file his affidavit. But the fee of this private legal service engaged by CBI is being borne by the law ministry. What CBI needs is not just functional autonomy to investigate but also financial, administrative and legal autonomy," the senior CBI official said.

A case in point is CBI's proposal to set up an anti-human trafficking cell for which it had to seek the approval of the personnel ministry, with which the matter is still pending. If CBI has to submit an extradition request or Letter Rogatory abroad, it has to take the long process of getting it vetted from the ministries of law, personnel and external affairs.

A parliamentary panel report earlier this week, however, blamed CBI for depending on the government for officers on deputations and asked CBI why it had not opted for direct recruitment to build its own cadre of officers. Ranjit Sinha told the panel that the agency was averse to doing so because if a CBI's owncadre officer came under the cloud, CBI had little choice but to sustain him in the organisation on a nonsensitive post that will give birth to disgruntled group of officers. "We can, at least, send back the deputationist officer to the states if his integrity is under cloud," he said.


The Economic Times, 10 May, 2013, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/not-easy-for-cbi-to-be-independent-agency/articleshow/19980389.cms


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