Senior BJP leader Shanta Kumar advised all the political parties to come forward and give suggestions to the government for making the CBI (premier investigation agency) an independent investigation agency so that no political party in power could influence or misuse it.
While talking to Press at Palampur, Shanta Kumar said that all parties should respect the sentiments of the Supreme Court, which had categorically directed the Union Government to come out with a concrete proposal before the court in the next hearing for keeping the CBI free from all the pressures and pulls while performing its duty.
Central Government had already constituted a group of ministers (GOM) headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who would submit their proposal before the Supreme Court in this regard before June 10.
BJP leader advised opposition and other parties to rise above the party affiliation and should give suggestions to the GOM, so that the premier investigating agency could be made free from all the pressures. He also gave a example of Hong Kong, where public had revolted against corrupt government and forced to bring a legislation to check corruption. He added that now Hong Kong was considered among the honest countries of the world.
Shanta Kumar also criticized match fixing incident and expressed shock over the greed of cricket players who were paid crore for playing IPL matches accepted a bribe of Rs 60 lakh from bookies. He said that this was a shame for the nation and the government should seriously think to bring a stringent law to punish such people.
He said this was high time when all the political parties joined hands to pass an effective Lokpal and also bring the CBI out of the “clutches” of the government.
However on the otherside, BJP national leader Arun Jaitley had termed the Congress-led UPA Government’s move to set up a Group of Ministers (GoM) to draft a new bill to insulate the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from political interference as eyewash. He said that it was already discussed extensively during the debate over the Lokpal Bill as well as during the meeting of the Select Committee of the Upper House.
Jaitley said there were differences between the government and the opposition on certain points, but there was a broad agreement on most of the issues regarding the autonomy of CBI.
He accused Govt to cover up its misdeed and the new Group of Ministers on autonomy for CBI is only an eyewash. He claimed that there was no need to start afresh. He stated that the Lokpal Bill passed by Lok Sabha also has provisions on autonomy to CBI.
