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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  CBI should tread carefully: Chidambaram
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CBI should tread carefully: Chidambaram

Chidambaram says CBI is neither a 'caged bird', nor the 'Congress Bureau of Investigation'

Finance minister P. Chidambaram said investigating agencies such as the CBI should “tread carefully” while determining whether a business decision amounts to a crime, echoing what Manmohan Singh had said on Monday. Photo: BloombergPremium
Finance minister P. Chidambaram said investigating agencies such as the CBI should “tread carefully” while determining whether a business decision amounts to a crime, echoing what Manmohan Singh had said on Monday. Photo: Bloomberg

New Delhi: A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said it would not be proper “for a police agency to sit in judgement" of “policy formulation", finance minister P. Chidambaram stressed that “there can only be one executive".

Both were speaking at an international conference on corruption organized by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The conference appears to have provided a platform for the government to point fingers at the federal investigative agency’s functioning and for the agency to point them right back.

On Tuesday, Chidambaram said CBI was neither a “caged bird", a reference to the term used by the Supreme Court when it was commenting on the autonomy of the agency during proceedings in the coal block allotment probe—an investigation that is being conducted by CBI under the court’s supervision—nor the “Congress Bureau of Investigation".

Such myths are “craftily" fostered, the minister said. He added that the agency acts as a “victim" when it “pleads for more power".

Investigating agencies such as the CBI should “tread carefully" while determining whether a business decision amounts to a crime, he said, echoing what the Prime Minister said on Monday. “Pronouncing decisions taken with no ill-intention within the prevailing policy as criminal misconduct would certainly be flawed and excessive," Singh said.

Indeed, investigating agencies should “respect the line" that divides policymaking from policing, the finance minister said.

“It is not the business of an investigating agency to prescribe rules or question policy," Chidambaram said.

Responding to a question on the CBI’s autonomy, the finance minister said the agency is a part of the executive and that “there can only be one executive".

“Functional autonomy does not mean that you are free from the general financial rules," he said.

The government had done its best to give the CBI functional autonomy, the minister said.

On Monday, Singh and CBI director Ranjit Sinha sparred openly. “In the public debate on corruption in our country, it is sometimes forgotten that economic growth also implies greater opportunity for corruption," Singh said, according to the Mail Today newspaper. “While there is a need for fast economic growth necessitating need for quick decisions...the challenge...is to do it in a manner that there is no scope for impropriety," the paper cited CBI director Sinha as saying.

Singh’s United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has been besieged by revelations and allegations related to irregularities in the allotment of resources such as spectrum and coal mines, bilateral flying rights agreements with other countries, and the organization of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

The government’s inability to counter these allegations and address these issues have resulted in the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the government’s auditor, and the Supreme Court stepping in and suggesting, even mandating, changes in policy—a role that is usually the executive’s.

CBI has been at the receiving end of the controversies, too, but, under Sinha, whose term lasts till late 2014 (he took over in 2012) and who could outlast the current government, it has pitched for greater autonomy.

The next general elections are due in 2014 and opinion polls suggest that the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a chance of emerging as the single largest party in the elections.

Interestingly, Sinha’s appointment was challenged by the BJP that wanted it annulled because the selection had not been made through a collegium.

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Published: 12 Nov 2013, 11:05 AM IST
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