PIL against government's decision to appoint Gujarat cadre IPS as interim chief of CBI

A Public-Interest Litigation (PIL) was  filed in the  Supreme Court on Monday seeking quashing of government's decision of appointing Rakesh Asthana, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer, as the interim director of the Central Bureau of Investigation. 

The PIL also seeks  appointment of a Court-selected person as the interim Director of CBI as well as a meeting of the  selection committee, which consists of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the largest Opposition party and the Chief Justice of India, to appoint a regular director of the probe agency. 

The PIL states that the government took a series of steps in a "completely mala fide,arbitrary and illegal manner to ensure that Rakesh Asthana was given the charge of CBI Director and "prematurely curtailed the tenure of and transferred Mr. R K Dutta,Special Director, CBI, to the Ministry of Home Affairs".The PIL has been filed by Kamal Kant Jaswal, the president of Delhi based Common Cause through his counsel Prashant Bhushan. 

The PIL cited landmark judgment in Vineet Narain case  in which the court had directed that there should be a selection committee to identify a panel of names for the appointment of Director CBI, and thereafter the final selection to be made by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC).The PIL also cited that the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, 1946, , which governs the CBI, was amended in 2003 vide the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) Act, 2003 to state that the Director CBI shall be appointed by the Central Government on the recommendations of the Central Vigilance Commissioner, the Vigilance Commissioners and two Secretaries to the Government of India.

"As the above mechanism was not found sufficient to insulate the CBI Director, Section 4A of the DSPE Act, 1946 was further amended vide the Lokpal andLokayuktas Act, 2013 (the Lokpal Act) to provide that the CBI Director shall be appointed by the Central Government on there commendations of the selection committee," the PIL read.

Th petitioner has claimed that the Central Government    did not convene a meeting of the selection committee " even though it was fully aware that Mr. Anil Sinha was going to demit the office of CBI Director on 02.12.2016". 

The central government had last week made Asthana, a Gujarat cadre 1984 batch IPS officer, the interim director as the current chief probe agency Anil Sinha relinquished his charge. The decision came two days after CBI Special Director R K Dutta, who was among the frontrunners for the top post, was shifted to the Home Ministry as a Special Secretary leaving the agency without a  director for the first time in 10 years.

 Asthana,who was serving as the additional director of the probe agency  had previously headed the state SIT that probed burning of Sabarmati Express train at Godhra in February 2002. The SIT had then found that the burning of a coach of Sabarmati Express, which claimed lives of 59 people, was a "carefully planned and meticulously executed criminal conspiracy". The 1984 batch officer has also supervised the fodder scam probe allegedly involving then chief minister of Bihar Lalu Prasad Yadav.