Never a dull moment. Who would have thought that, in the run-up to 2019, we would be negotiating these issues: entry to a temple, menstruation, gender relations, the health of government departments? The latest to go topsy-turvy is our premier investigating agency, which is getting conferred with all sorts of new comic monikers. And jokes (“It’s no longer ‘CBI probe’, it’s ‘probe CBI’!”)
In a bizarre mirror inversion, the CBI has of late seen raids on its own headquarters, the 10th and 11th floors in particular, by its own officers, IB sleuths and what not. It could have been a bathos-ridden farce if the underlying text hadn’t been so grim. Well, the CBI has never quite been a pristine, taintless ‘institution’ (the word we love using to signify the exalted position an organisation enjoys in public perception). Not so long ago, it was called a “caged parrot”.
A cursory look at the timeline of cases against political stars would reveal a dizzying yo-yo motion. It’s the owner of the day who always dictated the parrot’s speech, and quite blatantly. This is also not the first time the CBI top brass have been caught settling scores with each other. Nor the first time the No. 1 has been shunted out.
So what’s different now? For one, the charges are of misdemeanour in conduct of duties. That is, corruption relating to ongoing investigations—the very raison d’etre of the CBI. The stain is spreading too, putting a question mark on the role of another ‘institution’, the Central Vigilance Commission, which has a partial supervisory role over the CBI. It has also besmirched the government, the PMO included, for not acting on time—at least to hide the muck from public glare.
Could the political masters have acted earlier? After all, this internecine tussle has been brewing for over a year. In the last three-four weeks, it was a ticking time-bomb. The government claims it did not expect things would reach such a pass where Alok Verma, the CBI chief sent on forced leave, would attempt to arrest his second-in-command Rakesh Asthana, or raid his own officials, embroil another in the RAW, or that the issue would reach the courts. Now that the super-sleuth (the GoI) is overseeing a mop-up operation of sorts, including snooping around the (former) CBI chief’s residence, do we have a semblance of order? Not yet. It’s still festering, and many questions remain unanswered.
What prompted the post-midnight crackdown? Well, no government could have sat and watched two of its top investigating officials, one of whom is protected by the statute, slug it out in public view. But was its course of action legitimate?
The CBI is supposed to be an independent agency. It is not in reality—but this reality has always been a conjecture or an allegation. Now, a (former) CBI chief, in a petition challenging his ouster in the highest court, has put it on record that he was under political pressure—either to influence or dilute investigations, even SC-monitored ones. This is not factoring in the Opposition’s conjecture that he was trying to act too independent, and making moves to get the Rafale deal probed (the R-word getting a new lease of life in the process!).
Verma was moving against Asthana for apparently being on the take in the `8,000-crore Sterling Biotech case—the vanishing act of the firm’s boss Nitin Sandesara from India was the least known, though not the least dubious, instance in the Nirav Modi/Choksi/Mallya pattern. Other cases were being talked of too. Not that Verma’s image is squeaky clean at the moment, till proven innocent that is. For Asthana has levelled allegations of his own. One, that Verma interfered to dilute the IRCTC probe against Lalu Prasad Yadav (Asthana, in his last stint as a junior officer in the CBI 22 years ago, had earned a reputation probing Lalu in the fodder scam). Two, that he took a bribe from notorious meat exporter Moin Qureshi (who’s quite a legend, having haunted the life and career of four top CBI officials till date).
By recommending the present course of action, the CVC, K V Chowdary, whose name pops up in the maze of stories of CBI office politics, has insinuated himself into the centre of a procedural row. The Supreme Court will rule whether the CVC has the power to bypass an appointing panel of which the CJI is a member (the PM and Leader of Opposition are the others). CJI Ranjan Gogoi, unless he recuses himself, will also rule on whether the government could override a statutory provision by sacking/suspending a tenure-protected CBI chief without consulting this panel.
Anyway, Verma and his team have either been shunted out or divested of their duties (one, A K Bassi, has been packed off to Port Blair!). Among Verma’s friends in the ED, chief Karnal Singh retires on Friday. And joint director Rajeshwar Singh, who was acting up on the Asthana case, may go on leave. The lobby behind them was getting all internal official papers leaked through the ED, which apparently the government wanted to plug.
Asthana, a Gujarat cadre official who came into prominence after catching L K Advani’s attention (and later, of course, Modi’s), had his chance of becoming CBI chief thwarted twice by the same lobby. But he was a fixture in the ‘inner circle’. CBI lore has it that he shot off the complaints against his boss after he was humiliated in front of junior officers by Verma for maintaining an independent hotline with the PMO. As the wheels grind forward, the whole bust-up will likely only be a temporary pause for the Lutyens lobbies using them as proxies.
Santwana Bhattacharya
Political Editor, The New Indian Express
Email: santwana@newindianexpress.com