The Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside Oct 23 order of CVC divesting Alok Verma of his charge to act as head of the CBI.
SC observed that the government should have referred to the Select Committee consisting of the CJI, Prime Minister and Leader of Opposition to initiate Alok Verma’s removal and directed the High Power Committee under DSPE Act to act within a week to consider Verma case.
The decision comes just 23 days before Verma was due to retire. Verma had filed a plea against the Centre’s decision to divest him of powers and sending him on leave. The Centre had also sent CBI’s Special Director Rakesh Asthana on leave.
The public spat between the two top officsdrs of India’s premier investigative agency witnessed a loty of mudslinging with both levelling allegations of corruption against each other. It also saw the agency being headed by an interim director, CBI‘s Joint Director M Nageswara Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer.
On December 6, after hearing arguments on behalf of Verma, the Centre, the CVC and others, a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had reserved the judgement.
The Centre had justified its decision to divest Verma of his duties and sending him on leave before the apex court saying he and Asthana were fighting like “Kilkenny cats”, exposing the country’s premier investigating agency to “public ridicule”.
(This is the first part of the story. Second part of the story will be detailed one)
-India Legal Bureau