UPA regime still wants to control coal probe
The Supreme Court has rightly thwarted the Congress-led UPA Government's bid to reclaim control over the investigations that the Central Bureau of Investigation is conducting in the coal block allocation irregularities. Both the CBI and the Government had been smarting from the dressing-down which the apex court had earlier given them for being complicit in a bid to compromise the investigations, and they were looking for ways to wriggle out of the situation. They thought they had found the way out when the CBI asked the court for permission to share some portions of the ongoing probe with the Government on the pretext that the investigating agency would require the Government's sanction to prosecute certain officials. The CBI also argued that it needed to share details of the probe with the Government because the Government's prosecutors had to be kept informed and prepared to face the court in subsequent hearings. In other words, the CBI requested the apex court to modify the latter's earlier order directing the probe agency not to share details of the investigation with the Government. Mercifully, the court saw through the game and struck down the request to share the details, and also demanded to know why the Government's sanction to prosecute was needed since the investigations were being carried out under the direct supervision and monitoring of the Supreme Court. We may not have heard the last word on the latter since the Government has to get back with a response, but the court's mood is obvious. Since the Government no longer has a role to play in the probe, it should not be placing obstacles under the garb of following rules. Nevertheless, the court's line of thought on Wednesday is important in that it can restrict the cases where Government sanctions are mandatory for prosecution. Investigating agencies may not require Government clearance for prosecution of officials in matters that the courts are monitoring. This is as it should be, because we have seen in the past — and many senior officials who have served in the Government and as heads of investigation agencies are on record to confirm it — that the Government often takes its time to accord or deny permission to prosecute officials, thereby making a mockery of the probe process.
Unfortunately for the Government, its woes do not end here. The Supreme Court has pulled up the Congress-led regime for causing roadblocks in the speedy investigation of the scam by not supplying the CBI certain crucial documents. The Government cannot dismiss the issue because it is the probe agency which has made this allegation in its status report to the apex court. The regime's attempt to drag its feet only reinforces the belief that it is doing everything it can, openly and surreptitiously, to sabotage the inquiry. The fact that the court observed it had found nothing substantially different in the three status reports that the CBI has given it over a period of time goes to demonstrate that the agency is not getting fresh material to take the probe forward. If the Government has nothing to hide, why is it withholding materialIJ Attorney General GE Vahanvati's defence that the CBI's remarks are not true “across the board”, is neither here nor there. The Government will have to do more to earn the trust of the apex court.