CBI, its autonomy and Lokpal: ------------------------------------------ Excerpts from an interview. I agree with most of it. Those who are interested in autonomy of CBI, and the civil service aspirants may please read this 900 word post! Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Raghavan was a member secretary of a commission set up to go into the recommendations given by the Justice J C Shah commission on abuse of power during the emergency and the misuse of institutions like the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation. Do you agree that the time has come to make CBI completely autonomous? I am only in agreement with the view that an investigative agency, particularly a federal investigative agency, ought to be totally insulated from any kind of influence -- political, parliamentary or otherwise. It should be allowed to carry out its investigations and arrive at its findings with regard to offences committed purely on the basis and strength of the facts it marshals and by going dispassionately into the merits and demerits of those facts. I am entirely in agreement with that point of view. That is what is done in the United States. For instance, the US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in tandem. The FBI is free to carry out investigations and the Justice Department does not interfere in the former’s day to day functioning. I think that kind of insulation from any kind of interference is absolutely vital for the working of an investigating agency which has to go purely by the laws, rules, regulations and procedures. But I am completely confused as to what “total independence” means. You can never have total independence of any institution in a democracy because democracy itself implies checks and balances, and interdependencies of authorities and institutions in order to enforce transparency and accountability. You just cannot let an institution go adrift and never reporting to any other institution and never submitting itself to any monitoring review or evaluation with regard to its functioning and particularly with regards to an institution which has dominion over the lives and liberties of citizens. That kind of total abdication of government responsibility with regard to that kind of an institution will be dangerous to democracy itself, to the people. So what is your idea of dealing with the issue? If, by independence, it means insulation from political interference, I agree. The CBI, at the moment, has no exclusive law to back it up. The first step towards making the CBI efficient, accountable and effective in carrying out its objectives is to have a law. The CBI is still functioning under the authority vested by the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act formed before independence and there is no law governing the objectives and manner of its working. Therefore, my first suggestion, if you want to make it independent, is to bring in a law mentioning specifically the jurisdiction, the objectives, the procedures to be adopted and the methodology to be adopted and how it should report, where it should report, in what manner, how the director should be selected, etc. We had, of course, said that the CBI director should have a fixed tenure of four years. Also, the system of deputation in the CBI should be dispensed with because if you send people on deputation for five-six years or even 10 years with the prospect of the man having to go back to the state where he came from for the deputation, he has to live with them for the next 10-15 years and therefore he will never be strong enough to carry out investigation in cases affecting the big shots of the state because he has to ensure that he will not be victimised. So you are in short saying that the CBI should not become as independent contrary to popular demand… The popular understanding of the independence of the CBI, cutting it adrift from all control, monitoring, evaluation, etc is out from my judgement. I propose the total banning of further employment of the CBI director even after retirement by way of allurement as governor, membership of commissions, etc, dispensing with the system of deputation and ensuring that the CBI chief is selected, as mentioned by the Supreme Court in the Vineet Narain case, in a methodology which is open and in which the leader of the opposition party participates. . Second, remove all the impediments for the people in the CBI to function in a self-respecting manner and insulate them from all external influence for which I have been saying, I am repeating, though they are in public domain, they are worth repeating. Fixed tenure, no job after retirement, no deputation and ensuring that they are bought under Lokpal or National Security Commission, whichever you prefer -- I have no objection if it is under Lokpal. And number three, nurture the culture, as has been done in the UK over decades, of independence, and in the US. Nurture the culture of preserving the sanctity of the institution. In India, there is a crisis of character and the institutions themselves are somewhat subverted because India, throughout its history, has depended on the cult of personality rather than doing things by institutional devices. That was the case in the time of Vikramaditya and Lord Ram and so on. So, the personality cult has been dominant in Indian . That’s why we are finding it difficult to nurture the sanctity of the institution.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 16:40:11 +0000
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