New Delhi: From the Supreme Court and the opposition, it was an embarrassing cleft-stick of censure for the Manmohan Singh government yesterday. While the apex court rapped it in the sternest terms for interfering in the CBI probe into coal block allocations, the BJP said in a no-holds-barred attack that the countdown to the end had begun.
And to add to its discomfiture, Additional Solicitor General Harin Rawal resigned, a day after he blamed Attorney General G E Vahanvati for influencing the CBI probe into irregularities in the allotment of coal blocks.
Earlier, an anguished Supreme Court said: “We believed you and trusted you.” In a trenchant criticism of the UPA government, the court underlined the need to liberate the Central Bureau of Investigation from extraneous influences.
The bench headed by Justice R M Lodha asked CBI director Ranjit Sinha to file an affidavit stating the changes made in the draft report vetted by Law Minister Ashwani Kumar.
“Had we not passed the order for filing of an affidavit, nobody would have ever known of the vetting by the political executive,” the court said.
“After all there is a question mark on the independence and impartiality of the CBI,” it added in an echo of what the opposition and civil society activists have long been alleging.
“We are studying the Supreme Court observation and we will take appropriate action,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told reporters as the opposition sharpened its knives.
Added Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath somewhat euphemistically: “If the Supreme Court has made adverse remarks, then obviously these remarks are not pleasant.”
As the question over the premier investigating agency’s independence came under the spotlight again, CBI chief Sinha said: “It is now for them (Supreme Court) to take the call as to what type of autonomy is to be given to the agency or under what circumstances the agency has to interact with the political masters.”
The UPA II government, which is heading for elections next year, has found itself in a growing morass of allegations of corruption over allocations in 2G spectrum and now coal.
Last week, the CBI had told the Supreme Court that it shared its March 8 status report on investigations with Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and a senior bureaucrat in the Prime Minister’s Office.
CPI leader D Raja said the prime minister must own responsibility. The BJP, which termed the UPA II government the most corrupt since independence and has been asking for Manmohan Singh’s resignation, said he could not escape accountability.
IANS
