“...CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) has become a caged parrot. We can’t have CBI a caged parrot speaking in its master’s voice. It is a sordid saga where there are many masters and one parrot.” - Observation by the Supreme Court of India
The judges were being kind. The self-image among CBI is one of Draupadi! On Monday, the agency’s director, Ranjit Sinha, made a brave claim for autonomy. The five ministers, charged with hearing him and then evolving a formula that the Supreme Court (SC) might accept, were quick to knock the bottom out of the presentation. Kapil Sibal, speaking on behalf of the GoM said, they are open to a panel of retired judges having oversight on the federal investigation agency.
Buried under the smokescreen of ‘functional autonomy’ was CBI’s concurrent need for ‘financial autonomy.’Facts show how the parrot isn’t just caged. It’s starved. A demand of Rs 425.36 crore was made for 2013-14, but actual allocation was nearly 9 per cent less. ‘But we are a poor country,’ babus in the controlling department of personnel and training (DoPT) told me. Well, how about context on what this reduced base of Rs 387.82 crore does to quality: 82 per cent of the budget is soaked by salaries alone. And before you think CBI is over staffed, it has an acknowledged shortage of 851. So, 82 per cent of all money going to salaries could rise if staff shortfall is made good some day.
Results of starvation are obvious enough. Ask Mahanagar Telephone Nigam limited (MTNl). Earlier this month they had to switch off CBI phones because of non payment! Only classic police-style arm twisting got the lines restored. Hardly a message that CBI should be sending to a commercial organisation they might need to probe some day, or, for that matter, to any other vendor/service provider.
Ditto for the gleaming steel and glass headquarters commissioned in New Delhi’s Central Government Offices Complex. Annual cost of upkeep is Rs 8 crore. But how much does finance minister P Chidambaram giveIJ Just about half of that!
Then the Parliamentary Standing committee on Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions recently noted the absence of a full-fledged laboratory, because of which sensitive forensic exhibits are being sent out to private labs. In its report submitted to Parliament on May 3 this year, the committee went on the record about this sorry state of affairs.
Ironic, therefore, that Chidambaram chairs the ‘group of masters’ tasked to draft the plan on how far the parrot can fly! Ditto on DoPT minister of state V Narayanaswamy, CBI’s direct master along with the Central Vigilance Commission, to be sitting on the GoM. Narayanaswamy, and home minister Sushil Shinde, not Sinha, decide who is picked up from the Indian Police Service to serve in the CBI.
Sinha presentation on autonomy, therefore, has a fulcrum beyond functional autonomy: autonomy to investigate includes financial autonomy. An honest tax payer or corporate can’t expect that if the CBI director, and those in the rank and file, must grovel for very basic things.
Trust the FM to want status quo here. “All over the world--all bodies are accountable to somebody--they are accountable to executive, they are accountable to the legislature, they are accountable to the courts. I think what we have to ensure is that no one interferes with the investigations of the CBI,” Chidambaram said on television a few weeks back. Read between the lines, FinMin must control the purse strings.
Clearly, a panel of overseer-judges being proposed can ensure professional investigations (or prosecution) if the necessary monies are charged directly to the Consolidated Fund of India.
Such a provision exists under Article 146 (6) for the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). Autonomy for the federal investigator is no less important the CAG’s where the Constitution clearly states that “administrative expenses of his office including all salaries, allowances and pensions payable to or in respect of persons serving in that office, shall be charged upon the Consolidated Fund of India.” If the precedent “… in respect of persons serving in that office,” are replicated for CBI, Sinha’s demand for freedom to engage counsels will be taken care of.
(The columnist is CEO & Co-Founder, India Strategy Group, Hammurabi & Solomon Consulting. Tweets @therohitbansal).