Govt to remove bottlenecks in CBI powers

According to the amendment, the Government will have to decide on the Central Bureau of Investigation’s requests for sanction of preliminary inquiry in regular cases within a month. Earlier, the period for sanction was two months. The time limit for dispute settlements has also been reduced similarly.

A circular drafted by Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian has been sent to all Ministries and State governments.

Another amendment aims at committing the government to this time frame. To that effect, it has been recommended that the word “preferably” be dropped from the single-point directive “thus making these time-limits mandatory instead of discretionary”.

Incidentally, CBI director R C Sharma had asked the Government to waive the directive claiming this was the reason why several corruption cases were pending. Until September, the Government had cleared 74 out of the 138 cases against public servants.

In January, the Government had amended the directive to include bank officials of the rank of general manager and above in the list of officials.

Another significant change being brought about is in `trap’ cases in which the sanction of the administrative secretary will not be necessary any longer.

The government has also decided to authorise departmental secretaries to engage, on one or two-year contracts, full-time retired officers of “proven integrity” to function as inquiry officers to clear the backlog.

They will be picked up from a list to be prepared in consultation with the Central Vigilance Commissioner. These officers, according to the proposal, could also function as advisors to the secretaries of other ministries in regard to service-related grievances of employees.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister IK Gujral has directed the Ministry of Personnel to process on an urgent basis the report of the high-level group which reviewed the functioning and re-structuring of the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The Group comprising Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, NN Vohra, Central Vigilance Commissioner SV Giri and former cabinet secretary BG Deshmukh submitted its report last week. The group’s recommendations have covered the short and long-term measures to modernise and reorient the CBI and ED to meet the challenges posed by sophisticated crimes in the financial world.

The panel has suggested the induction of experts into these agencies to raise their credibility, introducing a new procedure for the selection of the chiefs of these agencies and the monitoring of investigations by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).