Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

The Supreme court on Monday dismissed a plea challenging the appointment of central Vigilance commissioner (CVC) K.V Chaudhary and Vigilance Commissioner (VC) T.M Bhasin. The court was hearing a plea challenging the appointment of incumbent CVC Chaudhary and VC Bhasin. The plea alleged that they did not have a “clean record” and a non-transparent procedure was followed while appointing them.

The Central Vigilance Commission was set up by the Government of India in February 1964 on the recommendations of the Committee on Prevention of Corruption. Its job is to advise and guide Central Government agencies in the field of vigilance. CVC is conceived to be the apex vigilance institution, free of control from any executive authority, monitoring all vigilance activity under the Central Government and advising various authorities in Central Government organizations in planning, executing, reviewing and reforming their vigilance work.

“We find no ground to quash the appointment of CVC Chaudhary and VC Bhasin,” said Justice Arun Mishra trying to dismiss the plea raised by the NGO.

Common Cause had challenged that the appointments were allegedly in breach of the principle of “institutional integrity”. Detailed judgments are to be released later. The bench found no reason to interfere with the appointment of the CVC.

It may be noted that while the judgment on the writ petitions was reserved by Justices Arun Mishra and Mohan M. Shantanagoudar in September last year, almost 7 months later, on April 4, the bench had made the observation “that various files have been submitted, bulky record has been filed without proper flagging and summary by the learned counsel for the parties”

Bhushan said Chaudhary’s name had cropped up in the Stockguru scam and also in the controversy relating to visitors to ex-CBI director Ranjit Sinha’s official residence. Chaudhary had also been alleged that he had abused his position as a member (investigation) in CBDT to under-assess income of a company owned by the controversial Ponty Chadha by Rs 234 crore.

The judgment states, “ We have not interfered with the appointments. The complaints against Mr. Chowdhary were made and they were looked into. It is not for this court to decide on the choice.”

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