Indian Constitution:Landmark Verdict

The judgment of the five-member Constitution bench of the Supreme Court (SC) that high courts can order a CBI probe without state consent, enshrines in law a practice that already exists. This is a landmark verdict and posits the desirability and necessity of making the CBI an autonomous federal investigative body, wholly free of political control and influence. The underlying premise of the judgment, as cited by the bench, is that the higher judiciary needs to ‘zealously and vigilantly’ play its role as the protector of civil liberties and fundamental rights of citizens.

That larger purpose would also be served even better if there was to be a truly independent national investigative body, unencumbered by political pressures or charges of infringing on states’ rights, from which citizens can expect impartial investigation of offences. Indeed, the Centre-state debate, premised on fears that the CBI may be used as a political tool against political parties, figures or state governments by the Centre, would itself lose relevance if the investigative body is seen to be patently autonomous , like, say, the Election Commission.

Of course, there have been previous examples where............

high courts have asked the CBI to probe cases. But strictly speaking, the SC was not dealing with Centre-state relations. The issue had arisen in the past, as in the case of the Gujarat riots, where a state government was seen to be actively colluding in the denial of justice to citizens. And given that law and order is a state subject, this raised the question of how victims can seek redressal in case the state’s own functionaries were accused of involvement in offences.

It is certainly, in a broader sense, a case of existing institutional imbalance, with one institution, in this case the SC, seeking to intervene to make a correction. The SC bench has, thus, rightly grounded the verdict and the authority , jurisdiction and powers it enshrines, in the primacy of the Constitution. The question of the erosion of our federal polity clearly doesn’t apply. And any residual doubts can be removed by making the CBI fully assume the role of a non-partisan , central investigative agency. 

Source:Economic Times

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