Forcing caged parrot to sing master's tune

For as long as one may recall, the Central Bureau of Investigation has enjoyed the reputation of serving its political masters, irrespective of the government in office, and in the process sacrificing any sense of professional efficiency and culture.

In 2013, the Supreme Court had called it “a caged parrot”. This basically meant being its political master’s voice. Considering the scale of happenings today, this was mild reproof. Under the present government, the investigation outfit has turned against itself in the course of serving the present political master and has perhaps forfeited any claim to being an anti-corruption body.

The Central Vigilance Commission is meant to be a watchdog looking at what the CBI is doing. The CBI director has a protected two-year term which ends in January 2019. After the earlier upheavals in the investigating agency and the allegation of partisanship routinely flung against it, the country decided that the appointee should be cleared by a collegium comprising the PM, the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition.

CBI director Alok Verma has been thus cleared. It became plain, however, that shortly after his appointment the Narendra Modi government imposed Rakesh Asthana on the CBI, a senior Gujarat cadre police officer in whose impartiality the director had little faith. This was in the face of written submissions of the director before appropriate bodies. Even so, the CVC upheld Mr Asthana’s appointment as special director. Why? Following this, the Supreme Court gave the CVC the benefit of the doubt? Again why?

It is evident that the system has shown itself to be deeply compromised. When the CBI director opposed the appointment of Mr Asthana on grounds of investigation being conducted against certain entities relating to Mr Asthana daughter’s wedding in Vadodra and his association with another probe, on what authority did the Cabinet Appointments Committee clear the latter’s appointment as special director in the CBI?

Circumstantially, the suggestion seems to be that Mr Asthana had the backing of powerful entities that could only have been political. Since director Verma appeared to enjoy bipartisan support, as his appointment suggests, was someone high up needed in the CBI to do the bidding of the government? If so, open warring between the director and the special director became a foregone conclusion.

But we should be clear that this is not a case of turf war between the director and the special director foisted on him. The fundamental basis of the turmoil in the CBI, from which it may find it difficult to extricate itself in the foreseeable future, is the implanting of the special director for political reasons.

In the first instance, the top court should suo motu supervise the conduct of an inquiry into the appointment of Mr Asthana as special director which seems in violation of laid-down procedures.