CBI chief's appointment kicks up row; BJP wants it put on hold

NEW DELHI: Ranjit Sinha's appointment as CBI chief touched off a full-scale political confrontation, with the opposition BJP saying that the process was fast-tracked to dodge the provisions of the Lokpal bill aimed at ending government's monopoly over appointment of the head of the country's premier investigating agency.
As the opposition asked the prime minister to reconsider the matter and put the appointment on hold, anti-graft activists banded under India Against Corruption questioned Sinha's choice alleging that the new CBI chief was tainted by corruption charges and was removed by a team investigating fodder scam charges against RJD strongman Lalu Prasad at the high court's instance.
In their letter to the PM , leaders of opposition in the two Houses of Parliament, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, said the unanimous recommendation of Parliament's select committee for ending government's monopoly over the appointment of CBI chief showed that "political and national opinion has now converged in the direction of taking the power away from the government of the day to appoint the CBI director since empirical evidence shows that these appointments were motivated by collateral considerations".
The select committee comprising members of all major parties unanimously recommended that CBI chief be appointed by a collegium comprising PM, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Chief Justice of India.
Swaraj and Jaitley further said, "This is a matter on record that hours before this recommendation was tabled on the floor of the Rajya Sabha, the government has chosen to appoint a new CBI director for a period of two years. The manner in which the government has made this appointment hours before the tabling of this recommendation in Rajya Sabha persuades us to a conclusion that the government wanted to pre-empt the possibility of this recommendation at least in the present appointment."
As government retaliated swiftly by rejecting BJP's demand for a reconsideration of Sinha's choice as the head of CBI, IAC leaders Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal said that Sinha, with allegations of corruption against him, lacked credentials to lead the investigating agency which is supposed to be the most critical component of government's anti-corruption apparatus.
Bhushan said, "The government has bulldozed and secretly appointed a person who has corruption allegations, especially in the fodder scam issue. This just shows that the government wants to hide its own corruption and wants to use CBI to protect itself."
With his colleague Arvind Kejriwal claiming that Patna High Court had taken Sinha off the team probing Bihar's fodder scam in which Lalu Prasad is one of the main accused, Bhushan said the government should not have chosen a person whose record is under the scanner. "Government's intentions are clear… it wants to brush its wrongdoings under the carpet," he said.
The political row comes against the backdrop of the entrenched perception about the misuse of CBI by successive regimes at the Centre, and can potentially hobble the new chief of the agency. BJP has accused the UPA of using CBI as a leverage to mobilize support from parties whose leaders are being investigated for alleged corruption, and for harassing political rivals.
As part of the effort to enhance the independence and objectivity of CBI, the select committee has recommended that the agency should be equipped with a separate directorate of prosecution to be appointed by the Central Vigilance Commission. The parliamentary panel also proposes to vest Lokpal with powers of superintendence and giving direction to CBI.
However, the committee turned down Jaitley's suggestion that Lokpal's concurrence be made mandatory for taking officers off investigations they may be tasked with.