Not cricket
Alok Verma should have been allowed to complete his term
The extraordinary reinstatement and removal of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Alok Verma within 48 hours last week have scarcely enhanced the reputation of the government. In the light of comments by retired Supreme Court judge A K Patnaik, who was overseeing the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) investigation into allegations against Mr Verma, it is clear that the CBI chief should have been allowed to complete his term. The three-member selection committee, in a 2-1 decision, removed Mr Verma on grounds of “the extremely serious nature of observations made by the CVC against Verma”.
Mallikarjun Kharge, a Congress Member of Parliament and the sole dissenting member on the panel, said the CVC investigation did not come to any definitive conclusion on the allegations against Mr Verma (the complaints against him appear to focus on tardiness to act in some key cases rather than outright dishonesty). Mr Kharge’s observations could have been dismissed as the standard dissent of an implacable opposition party ahead of the general elections. But Justice Patnaik has corroborated those arguments by repudiating in no uncertain terms the CVC’s report and suggesting other irregularities in the manner in which the investigation was conducted. He described the panel’s decision to dismiss Mr Verma in a singular understatement as “very, very hasty”.
Having overseen, at the Supreme Court’s request, the CVC’s enquiry, Justice Patnaik told The Indian Express that there was no corruption charge against Mr Verma. Justice Patnaik made several additional points worth noting. First, he said, the enquiry was conducted solely on the claims of Mr Verma’s deputy, Rakesh Asthana, and the statement purportedly signed by Mr Asthana on November 9 listing the accusations against Mr Verma was not signed in his presence. Second, the findings of the CVC report were not his. Third, he said, the CVC’s word cannot be the final one. Indeed, it is odd that the committee did not seem to consider it relevant that the charges against Mr Verma had been filed by the same person against whom an FIR has been filed for corruption by the CBI, and who is currently being probed in six cases. In his letter of resignation from the Indian Police Service, Mr Verma also raised these issues and said the selection committee did not provide him an opportunity to explain the details as recorded by the CVC before arriving at the decision. The other disturbing signal is the government’s refusal to make the report available to the selection committee despite Mr Kharge asking for it.
The weight of evidence makes it obvious that the government has not played with a straight bat, and raises questions about its motives in this undoubtedly unique development in the country’s premier investigating agency. It is strange that a government that deemed the corruption charges against Mr Verma serious enough to oust him from the CBI should consider him qualified to head another official post, of Director General, Fire Services, which he has declined. No less odd is the fact that Justice Sikri, who was part of the three-member selection panel and whose vote was decisive in Mr Verma’s ouster, did not see fit to raise these obvious points of procedure and law.