SC asks AG to look at Centre's appointment process on CVC, VC

The Supreme Court today asked Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi to examine the allegation that Government was going ahead with the appointment of Chief Vigilance Commissioner(CVC) and Vigilance Commissioner (VC) by giving a go bye to the apex court directions.
"What should we do. You examine it and tell us tomorrow," a bench headed by Chief Justice R M Lodha told Rohatgi.
The bench, also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman, said the Government appears to be "restricting the appointment to one category of people where as the statute provides others."
"This is in sharp contrast to the appointment of Lokpal", the bench further observed after noting the submissions of senior advocate Ram Jethmalani and advocate Prashant Bhushan that the Centre was going ahead with the appointment of CVC and VC without giving wide publicity to the vacancies arising on the completion of tenure of CVC Pradip Kumar and VC J M Garg on September 28 and September 7 respectively.

They referred to the July 21 letter issued by the Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), to Secretaries in Government to suggest names for empanelment for the post of CVC and VC, allegedly aimed at keeping away the common people.
"The letter of July 21,2014 is contrary to the direction issued by apex court in the cases of Vineet Narayan v/s Union of India," the application said.

Jethmalani said it was not necessary to put a restriction that every person who applies for the post should be a civil servant.
Bhushan said the letter suggests that no application can be directly entertained by the DoPT and only those sponsored by the Secretaries would be in the zone of selection.

The bench told the Attorney General that the application seeking to restrain the Government from proceeding ahead with the appointment has been filed when this court has already on August 4 issued notice and sought response of DoPT for making the appointment of CVC and VCs more transparent through public advertisement on the lines of Lokpal.