CM Vs PM: CBI Sinks Autonomy For Political Gratification

NEW DELHI: Corruption is always a case of the pot calling the kettle black, at least in politics. Charge for charge, so if the Delhi Chief Minister’s Principal Secretary is under some kind of undeclared probe, opposition fingers are now being pointed as easily at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for alleged irregularities when was handling the Delhi District Cricket Association.

And while the public listens to one over the other, or drowns out the cacophony altogether, the attention has to shift really to the Central Bureau of Investigation that has been used by almost every single government in power at the centre to hit out at political opponents. To the point where the ordinary citizen excuses the silence of important regional leaders like Bahujan Samaj party’s Mayawati at one point, or more recently Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa or before the Bihar elections Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Yadav to the CBI cases hanging against them.

Right or wrong, India’s premier investigating agency has over the years thrown out autonomy and independence from its functioning, and replaced it with abject servility that allows it to discard rules and norms as it targets opponents of the government in power.

But even the CBI has hit a new low in the manner in which the recent raid on the office of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has been conducted, with his office being locked, and Kejriwal himself being treated as Aam Aadmi leaders told The Citizen, “like a criminal”.

Old timers point to 1985 when the biggest spy scandal in Indian history (Coomer Narain Spy Case) was detected in then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s own office. Dr.P.C.Alexander's(Principal Secretary to PM) his own private secretary T.N.Kher (who was closest to him) was one of the king pins. When the CBI and police (directed by the IB ) raided the PMO to search for Kher's papers , they went about it “very discreetly” without locking out either the PM or Principal Secretary.

The other accused in the case were also well placed: S. Sankaran, then Senior P.A. in the President's Secretariat; Jagdish Chandra Arora, then P.A. to the then Secretary, Defence Production; Jagdish Mittar Tiwari, then Senior P.A. to then Additional Secretary, Ministry of Defence (MoD); Amrik Lal, then Senior P.A. to erstwhile Joint Secretary (Supply) MoD; V.K. Palaniswamy of the Ministry of Shipping and Transport, H.N. Chaturvedi, then Assistant EP (LSC), Ministry of Commerce; T.N. Kher, then P.S. to the then Principal Secretary to the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, Mr. P.C. Alexander; P. Gopalan, then Senior P.A and K.K. Malhotra, then P.A. to the Principal Secretary to the P.M.; Swaminath Ram, UDC in the office of the Principal Secretary to the P.M.; K.C. Sharma, then P.A. in the Planning Commission and S.L. Chandra.

The question being asked by former intelligence and CBI officials is: what was the need to lock out the Chief Minister and senior officials. Raids in the past had been carried out without any such ‘drama’ In none of the cases the President, ministers or senior officials was locked out. Why did they do that for an old case with so much of drama?

And the answer to the question then settles on politics, where the drama surrounding the raid became more important than the raid itself. The very fact that at the end of it the CBI could only confirm finding 14 bottles of whisky in Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar’s office is being mentioned by several officials as a case in point! The CBI has shared explicit details about the brands, maintaining that this was above the permissible level of nine litres.

Politicians in Opposition have accused the governments of misusing the CBI for victimising political opponents. Not so long ago those who are Ministers in government today were on the record charging the Congress led government at the centre of misusing the CBI for its own ends. Minister Venkaiah Naidu accused the Manmohan Singh government of targeting Lokjanshakti party leader Ram Vilas Paswan in February last year for alleged irregularities in recruitments of the Bokaro Steel Plant. “Paswan is the latest example of misuse of CBI by Congress,” he said. Now after the raid on the Delhi CM office Naidu has asserted, “CBI is an independent organisation.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as Gujarat CM was also categorical, “The government in Delhi wants to stop our march to power. They have fielded the CBI to threaten us. CBI can silence Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati but not me,” he told BJP supporters “They have been trying to instill fear of CBI (in me) every now and then. I will never be cowed down by CBI,IB,RAW or any agency in the world.” he added/

In Opposition, then party spokesperson and now Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to a CBI probe against Pramod Mahajan in the telecom spectrum scam, "I think by misusing CBI Congress has clearly showed to what depths decency in politics can be brought down". Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had made similar observations about the CBI when the BJP was in opposition.

The CBI was instituted in 1941, as India’s interpol. It was to be autonomous and independent. But over the years, political misuse, has robbed it of this image altogether. More so as many of the cases pursued by it are high profile in nature, and activated by one government only to be silenced by the next. Bofors was a case in point where the CBI finally squashed the case by not challenging the de-freezing of accounts in London held reportedly by Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi. The Congress government dug in its heels and refused to budge from what was clearly tampering with evidence in the case that was finally closed.

The CBI earned brickbats for its inefficient investigation in the Bhopal gas tragedy. Former CBI joint director C.B.Lall has subsequently claimed that he was asked to go soft on Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, in the 1984 tragedy where justice was denied to the victims, who are still paying for it in terms of mental and physical distress.

Any number of cases involving senior politicians and bureaucrats have been “mishandled” by the CBI even according to some of its former directors like Joginder Singh and Lall who have brought the commissions and commissions of the Agency into the public domain. Singh himself was summarily transferred after the Gowda government that had brought him in to chase then controversial issues such as the hawala scam---in which Narasimha Rao was implicated-- and the St Kitts issue where the Congress party had reportedly hatched a maor conspiracy to frame former PM V.P. Singh.

Joginder Singh who is a staunch critic of the political misuse of the CBI despite being its head said earlier this year,reiterating his view that the CBI was no an independent organisation, “A case was registered against Sajjan Kumar (in the 1984 anti Sikh violence) only after 21 years. What does it show? If nothing else, CBI should have chargesheeted the concerned people and see what the court decides. The problem is that the police is a wing of the government and is not independent.”

In short, it is an organisation that has far outlived its utility, seen just as instrument used by the ruling dispensation to settle scores and ensure its writ is run. PM Modi’s earlier comment that he will not be cowed down by the CBI or any of the intelligence agencies, is now echoed by CM Kejriwal who has made it clear that he will fight this misuse to the finish. More so as all norms were discarded and the Chief Minister himself treated as an accused, according to him.