Coup in the CBI: Govt scrambles to buy time in the Supreme Court  

While all eyes are on the Supreme Court, which will hear on Friday petitions challenging the ‘effective removal’ of the Director, CBI, speculation is rife in Delhi that the Government will hand over reports in sealed covers and pray for the status quo to continue till the court has time to study the documents.

Even as Alok Verma’s right hand man in the agency, A.K. Sharma, who was Joint Director (Policy) was also asked on Thursday to proceed on leave, sources in the Government claimed that the SIT inquiry into the feud in the CBI could be over in a matter of weeks and hence the Supreme Court need not intervene at this stage.

Contrary to speculation in a section of the Government, a Supreme Court bench headed by Ranjan Gogoi will hear the petitions challenging the midnight coup in the Central Bureau of Investigation early on Wednesday. The other two judges on the bench are Justice SK Kaul and Justice KM Joseph. Earlier there was speculation that the CJI, being a member of the committee that appoints the CBI Director, could refer the petitions to a different bench. It was however the then CJI J.S. Khehar who was part of the committee that had appointed Alok Verma in February, 2017 the DCBI and not Justice Gogoi.

While CBI Director Alok Verma, who has been asked by the Government to proceed on leave, has himself challenged the direction, NGO ‘Common Cause’ has also filed a petition praying that the order be struck down as illegal. Both Verma and ‘Common Cause’ have argued that the Central Vigilance Commission, on whose recommendation the Government claims to have installed an interim director, does not have the power to remove or transfer the director; that this required the approval of the three-member committee comprising the PM, the CJI and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, which appoints the director.

The Government’s line of argument, articulated first by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and reiterated today by a CBI spokesman, clearly is that Verma remains the CBI director and that he has merely been asked to be away for a temporary period while a SIT, presumably constituted by the CVC, examines the charges made against him by the Special Director and effectively his number two, Rakesh Asthana, and also the charges that Verma has levelled against him. An extraordinary situation required an extraordinary measure is the argument. No approval of the committee was required because the CBI director has neither been suspended nor dismissed or transferred, the Government is likely to tell the court.

The CBI spokesman’s statement was tweeted by news agency ANI.

As the reaction to the tweet by former diplomat and Ambassador KC Singh indicates, there is scepticism over the Government’s stand. By searching and sealing Verma’s office after midnight, by installing as the interim director someone against whom the director had recommended prosecution, by transferring CBI officials working with the Director to innocuous posts and by posting officials working with Asthana to significant posts, the Government, say several observers, has blatantly displayed its bias.

With the Government clearly gunning for Verma and protecting his number two, can the Supreme Court afford to give the Union of India the benefit of doubt?

We will know in a few hours from now.