SC: States withdrawing consent to CBI ‘not desirable position’

SC: States withdrawing consent to CBI ‘not desirable position’

‘Need To Examine Issues Of Permission Recalls, Court Stays’

AmitAnand.Choudhary@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:09.11.2021

Expressing concern over eight states withdrawing their general consent granted earlier for CBI probe within their territories and allowing the agency to probe only 18% of the 150 requests made from 2018 to June, 2021, the Supreme Court on Monday said “it is not a desirable position” and decided to examine the issue.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M M Sundresh took note of an affidavit filed by CBI director S K Jaiswal that informed the court that the CBI’s functioning as an investigating agency and also as a prosecuting authority was being hampered with West Bengal, Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram having withdrawn their general consent, forcing the agency to approach the states to get consent on a case-tocase basis, which “is time consuming and at times may be detrimental to timely and prompt investigation”.

Directed by the court to place a “report card” on the CBI’s efficiency as a prosecuting agency, the director said that some of the cases in which permission was denied involved high-stake financial matters with a bearing on the economy. He also said that delays in trials were also caused by stays granted by HCs and furnished details of 367 cases in which proceedings were stayed, some of them in the 1990s.

The bench said that both the issues — states not granting sanction for probe and courts passing stay orders — needed to be examined and issued notice to all states and high courts concerned. The bench referred the case to the Chief Justice to decide on registration of a fresh PIL and for adjudication of the issues raised by the CBI director by an appropriate bench.

Additional solicitor general Sanjay Jain and advocate Sanjay Tyagi, appearing for the CBI, said that the problem faced by the agency was because of the “peculiar nature” of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, 1946 which regulates the CBI. As per the law, the CBI requires the consent of a state government to conduct investigations within its territorial jurisdiction.

“Requests in approximately 78% of cases were pending, which mainly pertained to bank frauds of high magnitude impacting the economy of the country. The delay caused in taking up cases by the CBI due to any of the reasons mentioned above, at times, leads to destruction or dissipation of evidence. This is detrimental not only for the investigation by the CBI but also for subsequent prosecution of cases,” Jaiswal said. He said that the CBI’s legal department was at present handling 13,291 appeals pending in sessions courts, HCs and the SC. He also gave details of pending trials in 9,757 cases — in 500 cases trial had been pending for more than 20 years and in 921 cases for 15-20 years.

Times View: This is what happens when there’s mistrust over the functioning of central agencies. That’s why it is important that agencies are not seen as partisan and do a professional job. States too should only raise objections when necessary, rather than try to score political points.