Swati Chaturvedi - CBI Director Alok Verma's Interest in Rafale Tipped Scales Against Him
New Delhi: The government’s 2 am decision to oust director Alok Verma as the
director of the Central Bureau of Investigation came hot on the heels of not
just his request for sanction to arrest an official considered close to Prime
Minister Narendra Modi but also his interest in the controversial Rafale deal. Last week, the
CBI filed an FIR charging Rakesh Asthana – special
director in the CBI and a Gujarat cadre police officer propelled to prominence
in the agency by the PMO – with bribery and corruption. Since official sanction
from the government is needed to arrest any officer above the rank of joint
secretary, Verma had placed a request but permission was not granted.
The Wire has also learned that Verma – who was
selected by a high-powered collegium including the Chief of Justice of India
for a protected tenure “not less than two years” that ends in January
2019 – had been readying himself to initiate a preliminary enquiry (PE)
in to the Modi government’s controversial decision to purchase
36 Rafale aircraft from Dassault Aviation, with a major part of the offset
contracts going to an Anil Ambani-led company.
The decision to
purchase 36 aircraft in a flyaway condition – in lieu of the originally cleared
proposal of buying 18 flyaway fighter jets and manufacturing 108 in India – was
taken personally by Modi and announced by him in Paris on April 10, 2015
allegedly without any of the necessary statutory clearances and is now the
subject of a criminal complaint to the CBI filed by former BJP
ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, and also
a PIL in the Supreme Court. The trio of Sinha,
Shourie and Bhushan had submitted a voluminous complaint to the CBI.
Verma not
only received the complaint but sought a confirmation from the defence ministry
about the authenticity of the official documents they had referred to. Earlier this year, in
fact, Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi Sanjay Singh had written to the
CBI and CVC asking that the Rafale matter be investigated, and that
correspondence is also part of the official record.
While the Supreme
Court has asked the government to inform it of the procedures it has followed
in the entire aircraft deal – a significant move since the Prevention of
Corruption Act criminalises certain official decisions taken in disregard to procedure – Verma too had begun
the process of looking at some of the Rafale deal documents and reportedly
wanted the defence ministry to authenticate them, authoritative sources have
told The Wire.
Verma’s interest in
the Rafale deal was likely seen by the prime minister and his closest aide in
government, national security advisor Ajit Doval, as a dangerous shot
across the bow and seems to have been the key trigger for the CBI director’s
removal. The net effect of the
prime minister’s action is that the upper echelons of the CBI have been
virtually dismantled as all teams have been dissolved and the CBI building
sealed with unknown intelligence officials carrying out raids.
Nageshwar Rao, who has
replaced Verma as acting director, is the first IG-level official ever to be
chief of the CBI. Verma wanted action against him too but the Modi-appointed
Chief Vigilance Commissioner, K.V. Chowdhary resisted. Rao’s first decisions have been to move the officials who
were investigating Asthana out of headquarters. Notionally, the Modi
government is claiming to have acted on the advice of the CVC but the move is
bound to be challenged at the Supreme Court. Noted lawyer and activist
Prashant Bhushan confirmed to The Wire that he is moving the
apex court, whose orders, he says, the Modi government has flagrantly violated.
Already, opposition
politicians have accused Modi of ousting Verma to ensure the Rafale deal is not
taken up for investigation. Is there a
co-relation betn Rafale deal and removal of Alok Verma? Was Alok Verma about to
start investigations into Rafale, which cud become problem for Modi ji?
While the Modi
government’s unofficial spin to the media is that the Centre has acted against
both Verma and Asthana, officials familiar with the case insist there is no
equivalence between the two. Verma, they say, is the CBI director with a
collegium protected tenure who acted with the full backing of the law against
his junior for alleged bribery and extortion.
This
was never a turf war as is being made out in the media but an outgrowth of the
Modi government’s attempts to politicise the functioning of the CBI. As
director, Verma insisted on ensuring that extra constitutional authorities did
not carry out a political vendetta against rival politicians. Special director
Asthana, on the other hand, appeared eager to play out political agendas. When
Verma as director resisted, Asthana sought to make this an issue in a complaint
to the CVC.
Top CBI officials say
Asthana has also acted in ways that have weakened the case against Vijay
Mallya, as reported in The Wire. Sources say Modi, BJP
president Amit Shah and Doval were in a huddle from early evening. The result
was what is being termed as a ‘coup against the CBI. Top officials say this is
the latest example of the “undeclared emergency” – an action unsupported by an
law.
