New Delhi: Rejecting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's charge that CBI was targeting her at the behest of the Centre, the government has said the probe agency functions in "absolute transparency" under the Modi dispensation.
"There is nothing to suggest that CBI has been used or misused in the last 12 months of the Narendra Modi government. There is absolute transparency in the working of CBI," Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh has said.
"The government is trying to ensure that CBI becomes more independent, more transparent, more autonomous and has the confidence to exercise its powers in a judicious and impartial manner so it can fulfil the purpose and objective for which it was established," Singh, whose ministry acts as the nodal authority for CBI for administrative work, told PTI in an interview.
Banerjee had recently dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send her hundreds of CBI notices and alleged that BJP was trying to "stifle" Trinamool Congress?s voice for protesting against his "anti-people" policies including the Land Acquisition Bill.
She had told an election rally that "whoever will speak against Narendra Modi, he will send the person a notice. It is his work. I am not afraid of him. I know how to fight."
The CBI, which is probing the Saradha scam, had sent a notice to Mamata Banerjee's party Trinamool Congress seeking details of income and expenditure between 2010 and 2013.
"That you should ask her why she thinks so. Otherwise on the ground there is no evidence to say that we have done things like that. Or we have unleashed CBI against any government for that matter, whether it is West Bengal government or any other," the Minister said.
Mamata had also recently alleged that CBI takes up only those cases which "suit it politically", while showing no interest in others.
"They do what suits them politically. I had a penchant for seeking CBI probe into incidents but it is changing now," she had told the state assembly on Tuesday.
Referring to the perception that the premier investigative agency was used by the governments of the day to target political adversaries, Singh said,"C in CBI stood for Congress Bureau of Investigation."
"On a serious note, I would say we have the same persons there, same set of officers there. When the earlier CBI Director retired, the senior-most took over," the Minister said, rejecting allegations of interference in the agency's working.
"CBI has also been very fair in taking over the cases whenever requests have come. So, the evidence on ground does not point to that (Mamata's allegation)," he said, adding that there was "no vendetta politics" by the Centre.
To a question on CBI's former Director Ranjit Sinha coming under the CVC lens over the way the agency conducted its probe in the multi-crore coal blocks allocation scam, the Minister said, "whosoever has committed a sin, will pay for it".
"I will not like to go into the details of an individual case or an individual. The law of land takes its course. Whatever happened has happened before we took over. So these all are the sense of the earlier government," he said.
Terming as "inappropriate" the alleged meetings of Sinha with the accused in coalgate and 2G cases, the Supreme Court had recently said the matter "needs to be investigated" and asked the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to assist it.
Singh also slammed Congress for doing "propaganda" on the issue of Lokpal.
"It was the considered unanimous view across the country, across the Parliament, that we should have a Lokpal at the Centre level and Lokayuktas at the state level. So nothing wrong in that. It is a very positive and strong decision. Now what happened with the Lokpal. The Congress goes about making a propaganda out of it but they have no data and statistics," the Minister said.
The Lokpal Act which was enacted by them had a provision that the selection of the Lokpal would be made by a committee that will have Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha as its member, he said.
"So, in order to go ahead with the process, we brought an amendment to propose that in the absence of a recognised LoP, as is the case in the present 16th Lok Sabha, we would have the leader of the single largest opposition party as a member.
"So, in fact, we have obliged them. We have made a place for the leader of the largest opposition party which happens to be Congress party to become the member of the selection committee. So they should be rather grateful to us, but they are accusing us (of delay)," the Minister said.
The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act provides for establishment of a Lokpal for the Union and Lokayuktas for the states to inquire into corruption charges against public functionaries. The Lokpal and Lokayuktas and Other Related Law (Amendment) Bill, 2014 is under consideration of a Parliamentary standing committee.
Singh said the government will soon appoint the chiefs of Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and Central Information Commission (CIC).
"There has been a court intervention and we were directed to keep the court informed about the progress being made in the appointments of the CVC. We had the last appearance in the court just the few days back and they have asked us to go ahead and very soon the process of appointment will be completed," Singh said.
Similarly, in the case of Chief Information Commissioner, he said, the earlier practice was to automatically elevate the senior-most Information Commissioner to the post of Chief Information Commissioner.
"But the present government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has in its bid and its commitment to introduce more transparency, actually adopted the practice of having an open selection process even for Chief Information Commissioner. So that's why it has taken time," the Minister said, adding the process will be completed "very soon".
The transparency watchdog has been functioning without its chief for over nine months after Rajiv Mathur's term as CIC ended on August 22, 2014. Besides, there is a vacancy of three Information Commissioners.
In CVC, Central Vigilance Commissioner Pradeep Kumar and Vigilance Commissioner J M Garg completed their terms on September 28 and September 7 respectively last year.
The CVC is headed by a Central Vigilance Commissioner and has two Vigilance Commissioners. Rajiv, a former Director General of Central Industrial Security Force, is acting as interim chief of the anti-graft body.
