The credibility of CBI is at stake in HZL privatisation probe
Premium- If what CBI submits to the apex court can be ‘false or wrong’ in one case, what is the guarantee that its submissions on other occasions are free from such flaws?
The Centre informed the Supreme Court that it wants to withdraw the Central Bureau of Investigations’ submissions about the 2002 sale of a 26% stake by the government in Hindustan Zinc Ltd, based on which the Supreme Court ordered a full-fledged investigation into alleged irregularities in that act of privatization by the then Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance government. The court has rejected this plea, made by solicitor general Tushar Mehta who told the court, as per a report in the Times of India, that “every line CBI informed SC about the decision-making process… was wrong or false".
That Mehta had represented the CBI earlier and, therefore, the Central Leather Research Institute might take a scientific interest in the quality of Mehta’s skin should not distract us from more important matters.
There are three inter-related, but separate issues at stake here. One is the credibility of the central government’s premier investigative agency. If what it submits to the apex court can be “false or wrong" in one case, what is the guarantee that its submissions on other occasions are free from such flaws?
A second issue is the infinitely malleable and ductile nature of the judicial-investigative process that allows an inquiry into allegations of impropriety first raised in 2002, then dismissed, only to be resurrected, to carry on for two decades, without closure beyond final legal appeal. The third is the uncertainty that attends on commercial decisions in this country, which would be unnerving to all investors, except for native Indian entrepreneurs who learned the ropes of ‘managing the environment’ walking the corridors of power in district headquarters, wheedling favours in state capitals and lobbying powerbrokers in Lutyens’ Delhi.
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