The court did not indicate when it will pass the order, which is crucial to the role of the CBI director in the multicrore scam. The central goverment has taken up the cause of the director and argued that the removal of Joginder Singh from the probe would disturb the chain of command and the hierarchial set-up.
Attorney General Ashok Desia warned that this would set an alarming precedent for the prestigious investigative agency. Arguing for the government, he also wanted the harsh remarks of the High Court against the director to be removed as they were unwarranted and not based on facts on records.
The division bench of the Patna High Court, consisting of Justice S N Jha and Justice S J Mukhopadhyaya, in its order on October 7, remarked that the director had vetted the progress report submitted by the CBI. It accepted the report of the joint director (east) U N Biswas and asked him to be in charge of the probe.The division bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justice J S Verma, Justice S P Bharucha and Justice K Ramaswamy observed that it was of the view that making the director answerable for the entire organisation was the most feasible way to ensure the performance of its duties. The judges said so when counsel for the public interest petitioner, Ram Jethmalani, argued that Joginder Singh tried to be overbear Biswas, thus interfering with the adminstration of justice.
While agreeing with counsel that no individual officer should be brow-beaten, the judges observed that if the director was not made answerable then the court monitoring the progress of the probe would be unnecessarily involved in finding out which of the officers in the chain of command was responsible for lapses and then fix responsibility. This task would be near impossible, the judges said.
Explaining the problem before the court, the judges remarked that if we exclude the head of the organisation, we take on ourselves the task of finding out at every stage which of the persons or person are responsible. If the director is held responsible every failure of the CBI can be attributed to his failure. This is a more feasible manner. The court added: This would mean that without excluding the head, the court should ensure that the top person works. We will however ensure that the man at the helm of affairs works. Instead of searching for lapses in the entire department we will ensure that the head works. It is another matter if the head feels that he has bitten more than he can chew.
During the arguments, the judges observed that the tenor of the Attorney Genrals submissions and the averments in the petition indicated that there was an attempt to undermine the majesty of the high court. Desai vehemently denied this.
