GoM formed to free CBI from influence

GoM will be headed by Chidambaram; to have Sibal, Khurshid, Manish Tewari and V Narayanasamy too

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s scathing observations on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the government on Tuesday formed a Group of Ministers (GoM) to draft a law to insulate the agency from external influence.

The GoM, headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, has External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari and Minister of State for Personnel V Narayanasamy, sources said. CBI Director Ranjit Sinha will give his input.

The GoM will deliberate ways to strengthen the CBI’s autonomy and safeguard it  against interferences, they said.

The move came after the Supreme Court rapped the CBI for being a “caged parrot” of its political masters while hearing a case related to alleged irregularities in coal blocks allocation.

“CBI has become a caged parrot. We can’t have CBI, a caged parrot, speaking in its master’s voice. It is a sordid saga where there are many masters and one parrot,” the apex court said during a hearing on May 6.

The court's direction had come following an affidavit from the CBI director, who admitted to have shared a draft coal block allocation probe report with the former law minister, Ashwani Kumar, and two joint secretaries, Shatrughna Singh and A K Bhalla, in the prime minister’s office and the coal ministry, respectively.

The court had also asked the government to make an effort to come out with a law to insulate CBI from external influence and intrusion.

The GoM will finalise its findings and draft a law that will be filed to the Supreme Court before July 10, the next date of hearing of the case.

CBI, probing irregularities in the allocation of coal mine blocks on the direction of CVC, has registered 11 First Information Reports in the matter.