With the underlying refrain that the CBI as well as the executive are finally accountable to Parliament,the Group of Ministers (GoM) on CBI autonomy headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram is likely to finalise on Thursday its draft affidavit that will be submitted in the Supreme Court. This will be the third meeting of the GoM,with the earlier two meetings holding preliminary discussions on working towards giving functional autonomy to the CBI and taking the legal opinion on the draft affidavit. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had constituted the high-powered GoM in the wake of the Supreme Court order that set a July 10 deadline for the Centre to come out with a law to insulate the CBI from external influence and file an affidavit in the court. In the stinging criticism,the court had said that the investigating agency is a caged parrot of its political masters. The GoM has been looking at ways to give autonomy to the CBI in matters of investigation. The DoPT,however,has opposed scrapping of a clause that requires CBI to seek government permission before probing civil servants of the rank of joint secretary and above in corruption cases,a demand which the CBI has been making for a long time.
