The Supreme Court on 6th May ensured an autonomy for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by directing the government to ease its hold on the agency and permit it to promote certain officials without having to go through the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).
The court also said the CBI should be allowed to author some key reports independently.
CBI’s autonomy has been an issue since long now agreeing with the CBI’s demand for autonomy in writing annual confidential reports, related to appraisals of legal officers working with CBI, the government has handed over the task to the Director and Joint Director of the agency.
Thus far, as per experts, the government had been exercising excessive influence in the matter, which was affecting the functioning of the agency.
A three-judge special bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice R M Lodha ordered that “appropriate administrative orders be issued within 2 weeks” by the government.
“The change will help in effective discharge of function by the CBI,” the court said, approving non-statutory, administrative changes at the agency.
This decision has a big impact on functioning of CBI. In effect, annual confidential reports on the CBI’s director of prosecution, which experts say is a summation of the performance, will now be written by the director of the CBI.
Reports on the CBI’s law officers will be authored by the director of prosecution in consultation with a joint director.
Now its clear that CBI wants to establish a clear process of command. It means DoP should report to CBI and the law officer shall be answerable to the joint director. The other key development is that the CBI will no longer have to route all its internal promotions through the UPSC. It is now empowered to promote inspectors to the rank of deputy superintendent of police on its own.
The Government, however, has not entertained the CBI’s request that its director be vested with ex-official powers of secretary. Such a move will ensure autonomy as the director will then directly report to the minister in charge of the department of personnel and training .
