Jaitley hits out at Digvijaya, backs SC on CBI

Hitting out at Congress leader Digvijaya Singh over his “unwarranted advice” to the Supreme Court on how it should hear cases, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said Tuesday that the apex court was in fact strengthening the CBI by saying it ought to be more independent.

Hitting out at Congress leader Digvijaya Singh over his “unwarranted advice” to the Supreme Court on how it should hear cases, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said Tuesday that the apex court was in fact strengthening the CBI by saying it ought to be more independent.

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“If the CBI is made more independent, it does not get belittled; on the contrary, it is strengthened,” Jaitley said in a statement, dubbing Digvijaya’s statement the “frustration of a loser”.

The context: after the apex court dubbed the CBI a “caged parrot” — it had shared its status report on coal block allocations with the then law minister and PMO officials — Digvijaya had wondered whether the court’s observations weren’t belittling institutions.

“Over the years, the CBI has belittled itself.

The government has actively contributed to this process,” Jaitley said. “The image of the CBI has hit rock bottom…. The agency has been misused against political rivals.”

The senior BJP leader noted that Singh’s “ill-advised” suggestion has come when corruption of UPA government was under the scanner, and that he did not say this when the SC had ordered monitoring of Gujarat riots cases.

“The likes of Digvijaya Singh welcomed that monitoring. It is only when the corruption of the UPA government is being investigated by the CBI and monitored by the Supreme Court that monitoring of investigation is now being termed as constitutionally unacceptable. Such arguments of convenience have very little place in a meaningful public discourse,” he said.