The Government on Friday formed a Group of Ministers (GoM) to deal with the issues raised by the Supreme Court’s direction to make the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) an autonomous body.
The GoM will be chaired by Finance Minister P Chidambaram and will include Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari and Minister of State for Personnel V Narayanasamy.
It would have Attorney General GE Vahanvati, CBI Director Ranjit Sinha and CVC’s Pradeep Kumar as special invitees.
The Supreme Court had in its recent hearing on the CBI’s affidavit on the coal scam probe status report had indicted the Government for its interference in the agency’s functioning and asked it to come up with an affidavit on steps to make the CBI autonomous.
So, the GoM’s terms of reference include — evolving a statutory framework for securing independence of CBI on lines of the SC order, focus on independence of the CBI, focus on functional autonomy of the CBI, protect the CBI from external influences and look at any other issue raised by the SC order.
The first meeting of the GoM will be held on May 20 or 21.