Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi today told the Supreme Court that the cases arising from Madhya Pradesh's Vyapam scam will go up from present 185 and all efforts were being made by the Government to overcome the shortfall of CBI sleuths to take over the investigation.
"The problem that really arises is that the burden on the CBI is tremendous. The number of FIRs will rise and will not be limited to the present 185," the Attorney General submitted before a bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu which asked him to tell on August 24 that "by what time CBI will take over the maximum cases for probe".
"You tell the earliest date," the bench, also comprising Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy, asked him when he was explaining the difficulty faced by the CBI due to shortage of officials in taking over the cases.
Rohatgi wanted 10 weeks to answer the queries of the bench but he was asked to respond by next date of hearing.
He said though CBI has its own cadre, 50 per cent of the personnel with the agency are deputationists and now there has been a decrease in deputationists also.
"To solve this problem we will increase the strength of the CBI through the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT)," he said while explaining that there are certain grade of officials in the agency who are only entrusted with the job of investigation.
The Attorney General said a request would be made to West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh where CBI sleuths are involved in investigating Saradha and Vyapam scams respectively to send 200 state cadre officials on deputation with the agency to be engaged in probing other cases.
"CBI cadre is very limited," he said and assured the bench that steps are being taken to overcome the vacancies.
The apex court had on July 31 told CBI to inform it in three weeks about taking over of investigation of maximum number of cases out of 185 arising from the Vyapam scam.
The apex court also asked DoPT to inform it about filling of necessary vacancies in the CBI as the agency has complained that shortage of man power was coming in the way of probe.
It had sought AG's assistance of on the issue of filling of vacancies in the CBI.
