Will the Supreme Court step in to ensure transparency in the appointment process of the CBI Director as it ordered in the case of the Central Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners on December 13, 2018?
On January 24, a Bench led by Justice A.K. Sikri is scheduled to hear a petition to bring the CBI Director’s entire appointment process under public scrutiny and make it accessible under the RTI Act.
The petition, filed by NGO Common Cause and Anjali Bhardwaj, is coming up before the same Supreme Court Bench led by Justice Sikri which had, on December 13, pulled up the government for keeping the public in the dark about the appointment process of Central Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners.
Appointments had not been made for months, and posts of information commissioners remained vacant even as over 20,000 appeals for information from ordinary citizens lay piled up.
On December 13, Justice Sikri ordered the government to upload online each and every step taken to fill the vacancies, including the names of those in the search committee, shortlisted candidates’ names and selection criteria.
The petition scheduled for hearing has sought an equally transparent appointment process for the CBI Director.
It has demanded public disclosure of the procedure and rational criteria for shortlisting candidates for CBI Director; the composition, mandate and minutes of meetings of the screening/search committee; the names of short-listed candidates so that people can inform the selection committee of any significant adverse information about any of them; the minutes of the meetings of the selection committee; and recording by the selection committee of facts to indicate how the selected candidates are best suited for the post.
Incidentally, the hearing of the CBI petition before Justice Sikri’s Bench coincides with the scheduled meeting of the high-power committee chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to recommend a CBI Director.
The petition was transferred a few days ago to Justice Sikri’s court by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi. The Chief Justice had recused himself from hearing the case, saying he was a member of the high-power committee along with the Opposition leader.
This petition highlights how the government can stifle the independence of the CBI even at the stage of short-listing of candidates for appointment to the office of the CBI Director.
‘Cloak of secrecy’
The petition has urged the court to reiterate its firm stand of the past that appointments to high-integrity institutions like the CBI, Central Vigilance Commission and the Central Information Commission should not be made behind a “cloak of secrecy.”
In Vineet Narain’s case, the Supreme Court had clearly mandated that there should be no adhocism in the appointment and functioning of the CBI Director. In the Centre for Public Interest Litigation versus Union of India judgment, it had held that the “appointment to the post of the Central Vigilance Commissioner must satisfy not only the eligibility criteria of the candidate but also the decision-making process of the recommendation...The decision to recommend has got to be an informed decision.”
Finally in the Namit Sharma verdict, the court had directed transparency in the appointment of information commissioners and to regulate the process.