Another PIL in SC challenging appointment of Sharma as CAG

The latest challenge comes just over a week after the apex court on May 23 agreed to hear a similar plea

A fresh PIL was today filed in the Supreme Court claiming that the appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) was arbitrary and made without any transparency.

The latest challenge to Sharma's appointment comes just over a week after the apex court on May 23 agreed to hear a similar plea.

This fresh petition has been filed on behalf of former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami, former chiefs of Naval Staff Admiral (retd) R H Tahiliani and Admiral (retd) L Ramdas, former Deputy CAG B P Mathur and five other retired bureaucrats.

The petition filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan has sought setting aside of Sharma's appointment contending that it was made arbitrarily and "without any system for selection, without any selection committee, any criteria, any evaluation and without any transparency".

In their petition, the nine petitioners, have also sought a direction to the Centre to "frame a transparent selection procedure based on definite criteria and constitute a broad-based non-partisan selection committee, which after calling for applications and nominations would recommend the most suitable person for appointment as CAG".

Their petition stated they had filed an RTI application on February 21, 2013 "seeking information as to what is the system of appointment, whether there is any selection committee, what is the zone of consideration, what are the criteria, etc" and added that the response given by Director in the Ministry of Finance of May 2013 "clearly shows there is no search committee, no criterion, no system, no call for applications or nominations and is therefore arbitrary 'pick and choose'.