I’m okay with chief minister being given CID charge: Vij
Says CID officials will have to brief him till he is the home minister
CHANDIGARH: A day after he was divested of the charge of criminal investigation department (CID), Haryana home minister Anil Vij appeared to have reconciled to the decision, but with a rider.
“CID, the intelligence arm of the state police, will have to brief me as a long as I hold the charge of home portfolio,’’ the home minister.
“I have always held that chief minister has the authority to allocate or reallocate any department to a minister. This reallocation could have been easily done in broad daylight instead of a late night notification. But, I am quite okay with it,” he added.
The firebrand minister said his concerns about the “unresponsiveness” of the CID in providing him intelligence inputs and appointment of chief minister’s aides as the administrative secretaries of the departments held by him as a minister were settled first by chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar before he was divested of the CID charge.
Vij, who was upset at the functioning of the CID for its alleged indifference in not providing regular intelligence inputs to him, also found a justification for the softening of his stance.
“An officer has started briefing me now,” he said.
Officials said his grievance about not being briefed was unjustified as the CID was providing him with regular intelligence reports. “An Sp-rank officer of the CID was also deputed to personally appear and brief the home minister on urgent pieces of information requiring his attention,” said an official, who is not authorised to speak with media.
A row had erupted between the chief minister and the home minister over the control of CID when government websites cited the former as holding the charge of the department.
No notification was then issued by the government to make this change. Vij was quick to say that a mere mention on a website did not divest him of the charge of the CID and due process should be followed to do so.
The chief minister, however, did not order reallocation until the BJP high command made the two reconcile their differences,
BJP sources said.
HOODA MOCKS VIJ
Taking a dig at the home minister, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Thursday said after all the grandstanding, Vij has been made to eat his own words.
“He recently said that CID was the eyes and ears of the home department and taking away CID from him would be akin to robbing a person of his ability to hear and see. So now, the chief minister has robbed his department of eyes and ears. All that is left is the trunk and limbs,” Hooda said.
He also launched a scathing attack on Khattar-led BJP-JJP government, saying it was doing no work except “squabbling over” who controls which department.
›My concerns about the unresponsiveness of the CID in providing me intelligence inputs have been settled by Manohar Lal Khattar.
ANIL VIJ, home minister