Selection panel to meet next week and take a final call. Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge asks for more information on candidates.

New Delhi: A meeting of the high-powered selection panel to pick the next director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) remained inconclusive Thursday.

The panel, comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, is slated to meet again next week to take a final call on the CBI chief.

Thursday’s meeting lasted over two hours, but it is learnt that there was a lack of consensus among the panel members, which is why no decision was taken.

“No decision on CBI director today. Meeting has been postponed. Can be rescheduled anytime next week,” Kharge told reporters.

Sources said Kharge asked for more details on the candidates because the list presented to him had just the dates of appointment and retirement.

The Congress leader had been the sole dissenting voice in the panel’s previous meeting, which had led to the removal of Alok Verma as the CBI chief, less than 48 hours after he was reinstated to the position by the Supreme Court.

CJI Gogoi, meanwhile, is learnt to have pressed for the next meeting to be held without much delay.

The contenders

Among those in the race for the post include Rina Mitra, a 1983-batch IPS officer who is currently special secretary (internal security) with the Home Ministry. She had served in the CBI for five years.

Others contenders are Y.C. Modi, a 1984-batch IPS officer of Assam-Meghalaya cadre, who is the current chief of the National Investigation Agency, and Javeed Ahmad, also of the 1984 batch, who is director of the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Sciences.

The controversy

The controversy in the CBI began when Verma and his deputy, special director Rakesh Asthana, got embroiled in a bitter and very public turf war. Both accused each other of corruption in October last year, before being sent on forced leave on the recommendation of the Central Vigilance Commission.

Verma, a former Delhi Police commissioner, had been appointed the director of the probe agency in January 2017 for a two-year period.

After the PM-led panel removed him as the CBI chief on 11 January, he was transferred to the post of DG, Delhi Fire Service, which he had refused to accept. He wrote to the government that he be treated as having retired.

On 17 January, the government curtailed the tenure of Asthana and three other officers, including joint director Arun Kumar Sharma of the Gujarat cadre, DIG Manish Kumar Sinha of the Andhra Pradesh cadre and Superintendent of Police Jayant J. Naiknavare of the Maharashtra cadre.

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