Legality of CBI - Guwahati High Court Order Stayed
GOVERNMENT has acted with extreme alacrity and got the Guwahati High Court Order stayed by the Supreme Court. A Bench of CJI Sathasivam and Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, sitting at the Residential Office of the Chief Justice on Saturday stayed the order of the Guwahati High Court.
Interestingly, this issue had been raised by the present I&B Minister Manish Tiwari four years ago in an article for the Observer Research Foundation, wherein he said,
The CBI has no independent standing in law. Simply put, it is a piece of legal fiction whose underpinnings in law are tenuous to say the least. It still draws all its powers of investigation and arrest from the antiquated 1946 Act which essentially being a local Act provides that each state through an executive order under Section 6 of the said Act has to give the Special Police Establishment, what is colloquially called the CBI, permission to investigate particular offences in that state.
Why does the government not enact a straight and simple law empowering the CBI rather than let it function on the basis of a dubious piece of legislation whose basic legality is open to question .(This is exactly what happened in Guwahati)
It is imperative in a democracy that every organization of the government must draw its powers, privileges and authority from clearly defined legal statutes. The legal basis must not be fuzzy but sharply defined to obviate any obfuscation about both the intent of the legislature and the mandate it seeks to bestow.
Maybe he was too low in the hierarchy then for anyone to notice this.
Now the only solution for the Government is to hope for a favourable decision from the Supreme Court.