The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to respond to petitions alleging irregularities in appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as Comptroller and Auditor General of India and fixed the next date of hearing on August 8.
A division bench of Acting Chief Justice BD Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru heard the petitions filed by nine eminent persons, including former CEC N Gopalaswami and advocate Ml Sharma on the issue, seeking quashing of the appointment of Sharma as CAG, contending that it was made arbitrarily. The PIls contended that “Sharma’s appointment was made without any system for selection, without any selection committee, any criteria, any evaluation and without any transparency. Also, the zone of consideration has been restricted to civil servants, a limitation not found in the Constitution.”
The petitioners have sought a direction to the Centre to “frame a transparent selection procedure based on definite criteria and constitute a broad-based non-partisan selection committee, which after calling for applications and nominations would recommend the most suitable person for appointment as CAG”. "This person (Shashi Kant Sharma) has got the highest degree of conflict of interest than anybody else in the country, as he happens to be the key person in all the defence procurements from 2003 till the date of his appointment as CAG,” advocate Prashant Bhushan contended on the behalf of the petitioners.