NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Union government and the Central Vigilance Commission to respond in 10 days to a bunch of PILs challenging a law empowering the Centre to extend the tenures of directors of CBI and ED from mandatory two years up to five years through extensions given for one year at a time.
With the Enforcement Directorate putting the heat on non-BJP politicians in the last few years, Congress party’s Randeep Surjewala and Jaya Thakur, TMC’s Mahua Moitra and Saket Gokhale along with advocate and chronic PIL litigant ML Sharma had moved separate PILs challenging the the validity of the Central Vigilance (Amendment) Act, 2021.
Appearing for Surjewala, senior advocate AM Singhvi said that the amendment gave unfettered discretion to the ruling dispensation to keep the director of ED obliged by promising him extension, which was completely against the SC rulings in Vineet Narain and Common cause cases. In these two cases, the SC had secured a fixed tenure of two years to the directors of CBI with the noble intention of insulating him from political interference, he said.
A bench of CJI NV Ramana and Justices Krishna Murari and Hima Kohli said the CBI director is selected by a panel comprising the PM, the CJI or his nominee SC judge and the leader of opposition. It wanted to know the composition of the panel which selects ED director. Singhvi said it is an out and out government panel as it comprises the central vigilance commissioner, vigilance commissioners, home secretary, personnel secretary and revenue secretary.
On a query from the CJI, Singhvi said ED director Sanjay Kumar Mishra has already got two extensions and will complete four years in the post in November this year. The counsel said Mishra’s tenure was extended by a year and then an Ordinance was brought in on November 14 last year to give him one more year extension till November 17 this year. The bench asked the Centre and the CVC to file their responses within ten days.
Surjewala in his petition had said, “Extension of tenure, in this ad hoc and episodic fashion, reaffirms the control of the executive over investigative agencies and is directly antithetical to their independent functioning.”
He said, “A piecemeal extension system, as envisioned by the impugned Ordinances and Notification, creates a perverse incentive for officials to serve at the pleasure of the government. These investigative agencies were created to serve the public but with these amendments they are being subordinated in a clear and malicious fashion to serve the will of the executive.”
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