Citing the cause that he is a part of the committee that would meet later this week to select a new director for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), this Monday morning Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has recused himself from hearing the plea against Nageswara Rao\u2019s appointment as the interim CBI chief. Filed on January 14 by Common Cause \u2013 an NGO \u2013 the plea will now be heard in Court No.2 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The process of short-listing, selecting and appointing the director of CBI should remain a transparent process as per the plea. In violation of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act (DSPE Act), the current appointment of Nageswara Rao has been described to be \u2018illegal, arbitrary\u2019 and \u2018mala fide\u2019 by the petition. Usually, the committee to appoint the CBI chief is comprised of the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition, the Chief Justice of India or any other Supreme Court judge nominated by him. The petition notes that the Union Government has \u2018bypassed\u2019 the \u2018high-powered selection committee\u2019 completely.<\/p>\n
The petition also refers to the approval of the appointment of Nageswara Rao on January 10 to be the outcome of an \u2018earlier arrangement\u2019 by the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet. The Supreme Court on January 8 had dismissed that earlier order of October 23, 2018. The petition notes that the top court has ruled that the appointment of Nageswara Rao as CBI chief was in violation of procedures laid down by the DSPE Act. The government went ahead and \u2018still invoked\u2019 its order of October 23, 2018 as per the petition.<\/p>\n
The plea states that a lack of transparency could result in the \u2018undue influence\u2019 of the government, particularly at the level of shortlisting candidates. It could \u2018stifle\u2019 the independence of the CBI, it points out. The \u2018functional autonomy\u2019 of the CBI director is assured by the \u2018balanced\u2019 nature of the selection committee and the provisions which exist to guarantee its independence. These have been discarded by the Government of India in an arbitrary and \u2018illegal manner\u2019, as per the Common Cause plea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Citing the cause that he is a part of the committee that would meet later this week to select a new director for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), this Monday morning Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has recused himself from hearing the plea against Nageswara Rao\u2019s appointment as the interim CBI chief. Filed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":4044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4043"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=4043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}