“This order is an attempt to release the ‘Caged Parrot (CBI)’,” the Madurai bench of Madras High Court said on Tuesday while giving a list of directives to improve the functioning of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), borrowing the phrase from a Supreme Court’s hearing in Coalfield allocation cases in 2013.
A two-judge bench of Justices N Kirubakaran and B Pugalendhi directed that the agency should be given an independent status on the lines of other statutory bodies such as the Election Commission or Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Bar & Bench reported.
The bench was hearing a PIL requesting to transfer the case that was being investigated in an alleged chit fund scam to the agency, which the Court declined before making observations and recommendations about the structure and functioning of the agency.
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Directions of the Madras HC
During the hearing, the judges said that the CBI should be made independent with functional autonomy without administrative control of the government and further proposed that the Director of CBI shall be given powers at par with the Secretary to the Government.
The court in its order recommended that the CBI should only be accountable to Parliament and that separate budgetary allocations should be made for the agency.
At present, the agency reports to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) under the Prime Minister’s Office. Furthermore, a three-member panel comprising the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of India, and the Leader of the Opposition chooses the Director of the agency.
The Court also proposed that instead of hiring forensic and other experts on a case-to-case basis, the agency can hire experts to work with it full-time.
The bench instructed the agency to file a policy taking into consideration all the points within a period of six weeks for permanently recruiting Cyber Forensic experts and Financial Audit experts.
Meanwhile, the Union government has also been told to pass orders within three months from the recommendation of the CBI for an increase in manpower.
Earlier the court was intimated about the shortage of manpower in the CBI and in response it had asked the agency to send a detailed proposal for increase the divisions/wings as well as the strength of Officers in the agency within six weeks.
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