‘Headless’ CBI gives TMC a breather in scam cases

The Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) investigation into the high-profile Narada, Sarada and Rose Valley scams involving top Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders, has been put on the back-burner due to the lack of any direction and supervision from the top.

In June, then CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana had visited Kolkata and, after witnessing the officials “going slow” on the probe, had ordered them to file a charge-sheet in the case by 15 November and keep sending a report to the headquarters on the status of the investigation on a fortnightly basis. With the self-imposed deadline getting over, the agency is still “quite far” from presenting anything concrete in the matter, CBI sources stated. This has come as a major relief for the Mamata Banerjee-led government, which was looking at imminent arrest of some of its top leaders in November. According to agency sources, with the present caretaker director of the agency, M. Nageswara Rao having limited power to take a call on any major policy decision, the future of these scams will now be decided once a new full-fledged director is appointed after the tenure of the incumbent A.K. Verma gets over in January.

“This is a very sensitive case and it needs to be dealt with all the top brass of the agency being on the same page. Imagine, if the CBI files a charge-sheet today implicating these leaders, and the next day a DIG-rank officer files an application in the court that the CBI filed the charge-sheet under the supervision of officials in the PMO, what would happen then?” the sources asked. “Otherwise also, the CBI’s credibility is very low right now. When the agency is almost headless, no action should be expected from CBI in the cases involving these leaders,” an official source said.

After the internecine war broke out in the agency, Banerjee withdrew the West Bengal government

’s “general consent”, which empowers it to file a case or hold a probe in a state, and declared that the CBI could not conduct raids or carry out investigations in her state without her permission. As per rules governing CBI’s conduct, it has complete jurisdiction over Delhi, but can enter other states only with “general consent” of the respective governments. The West Bengal government had in 1989 given the CBI a general consent order to this effect. The CBI had filed an FIR against 12 TMC leaders in the Narada case in April 2017. It had taken up the case on orders of the Calcutta High Court. With the general elections near, officials said it was unlikely that the Centre would move against Banerjee and her party leaders post January (assuming a new CBI chief is appointed by then), as it would lead to allegations that the BJP was using CBI to target political opponents.