Bringing CBI "Home" is tough

Sources in the Personnel Ministry, however, disclosed that the Minister has not taken kindly to the BJP’s not-so-overt efforts to cut down his clout by taking away the CBI from him.

But unlike Advani, who in a recent television interview admitted starting the process of re-inducting the CBI to the Home Ministry, Janarthanan has kept his cards close to his chest. “I have not read the media reports in thisregard. I can react to such proposal only after being told formally by the BJP,” he maintained.

Launching a veiled attack on Advani, Janarthanan said the authority to effect changes in the ministries rests with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and not with anybody else.

But none in the BJP, including Advani, is keen on taking a pointed decision in the matter before it wins the crucial vote of confidence beginning March 27. Nobody, it is pointed out, wants to rock the fragile BJP-AIADMK alliance at this stage.

Observers, however, have attached much importance to Advani’s move to take over the CBI vis-a-vis his statement in the interview that he himself had urged Vajpayee not to keep the Finance Ministry under him. As it is, the Ministry of Personnel reports directly to the PMO and keeps the Prime Minister abreast with the activities of the investigating agency.

But with the Home Ministry taking charge of the CBI, the PMO will be at an immediate disadvantage as far as wielding direct control over itis concerned, it is being argued.

Eyebrows are also being raised over the marked shift in the BJP’s stand over the CBI. While in the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, the party had time and again demanded autonomy for the CBI — the same had in fact been promised in its 1996 election manifesto. But not so this time.

In its 1998 manifesto, the now ruling BJP distanced itself considerably from its own uncompromising stance. Instead of autonomy, it promised “greater autonomy” to the CBI. The manifesto says, “For a clean public life the BJP will give greater autonomy to the CBI, in keeping with the recent Supreme Court order, so as to prevent investigating agencies from being used to subserve the political designs of the ruling party.”

Union Home Secretary B P Singh, meanwhile, held a meeting with the senior policemen and bureaucrats of four western states. Attended by the DGPs and state home secretaries of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Goa and administrators of Daman, Diu and Nagar Haveli, theofficials discussed ways of having better Centre-state coordination to check crime and terrorism in their respective states and to share the intelligence reports in tackling the menace.