Reply in 10 days on ED chief’s tenure extension: Govt to Supreme Court India News – Times of India

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Central government and the Central Vigilance Commission to respond within 10 days to PILs challenging a law empowering the Center to extend the tenure of directors. CBI and ED from two years to five years compulsory through extension granted for one year at a time.
Non-BJP leaders have been targeted by the Enforcement Directorate over the years. CongressK Randeep surjewala and Jaya Thakur, Mahua Moitra of Trinamool Congress and Saket Gokhale along with advocate and old PIL litigant ML Sharma had filed separate PILs challenging the validity of the Central Vigilance (Amendment) Act, 2021.
Senior advocate AM appearing for Surjewala Singhvi Said that the amendment gave free discretion to the ruling government to keep the ED director bound by promising extension, which was completely against the Supreme Court rulings in Vineet Narayan and common cause cases. He said that in these two cases, the Supreme Court had achieved a fixed tenure of two years with the noble intention of protecting the CBI directors from political interference.
A bench of CJI NV Ramana and Justices Krishna Murari and Hema Kohli said the CBI director is selected by a panel consisting of the Prime Minister, the CJI or his designated SC judge and the Leader of the Opposition. It wanted to know the composition of the panel that selects the ED director. Singhvi said this is an external government panel as it includes the Central Vigilance Commissioner, Vigilance Commissioner, Home Secretary, Personnel Secretary and Revenue Secretary.
On a question by CJI, Singhvi said ED Director Sanjay Kumar Mishra Already got two extensions and will complete four years in this post in November this year. The lawyer said Mishra’s tenure was extended by one year and then an ordinance was brought on November 14 last year, giving him an extension of one more year till November 17 this year. The bench asked the Center and the CVC to file their replies within 10 days.
Surjewala, in his plea, had said, “The extension of tenure in this ad-hoc and contextual fashion reaffirms the executive’s control over the investigating agencies and is directly against their independent functioning.”