New Delhi
\nThe Centre today defended before the Supreme Court its decision to divest CBI Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana of their powers and send them on leave, saying the public fight between the two top CBI officers made the probe agency a subject of ridicule.<\/p>\n
\u201cDispute between CBI Director and Special Director was pulling down the integrity and respect of the premier institution. The two top officers were fighting like Kilkenny cats,\u201d Attorney General KK Venugopal told a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph.<\/p>\n
The AG\u2019s statement came in response to a question by Justice Joseph on whether the Centre had the power to divest the CBI Director of his powers under the Prevention of Corruption Act.<\/p>\n
Justice Joseph pointed out that Section 4(1) of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act that governs the CBI says that in corruption cases, the Central Vigilance Commission will have superintendence over CBI, while Section 4(2) says that the Centre will have power of superintendence in all other matters. He wondered if the Centre could also divest him of powers under the PC Act.<\/p>\n
He has been immobilised and divested of all powers for now, Venugopal said, requesting the Bench to look at the Centre\u2019s order as a whole. Verma who is due to retire on January 31 and Asthana have been at loggerheads for quite some time. They were sent on leave last month and both have filed separate petitions challenging the government\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
Noting that the fight created an unprecedented and extraordinary situation and the Government was watching with \u201camazement\u201d as to what these two officers were doing, Venugopal said in such a situation it was \u201cabsolutely essential\u201d for the Centre to step in. \u201cIf the government had not done so, only God knows where and how this fight between the two top officers would have ended,\u201d the Attorney General said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi The Centre today defended before the Supreme Court its decision to divest CBI Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana of their powers and send them on leave, saying the public fight between the two top CBI officers made the probe agency a subject of ridicule. \u201cDispute between CBI Director and Special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49337,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49335\/revisions\/49337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}