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Issue notice to Centre on Bengal plea against CBI probes: SC to registrar
West Bengal has said that the CBI has no inherent jurisdiction to conduct a probe in any part of the state, including railway areas, till the time it obtains a prior sanction.
The Supreme Court on Monday directed its registry to issue a formal notice to the Centre on a suit filed by the West Bengal government to debar the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from conducting probes in the state without prior approval of the government.
A bench, led by Justice L Nageswara Rao, said the notice has to be issued as a matter of procedure.
“The registry has to automatically issue a notice. There is no procedure for listing of suits before the court without issuance of a notice. We will ask the registry to issue a notice. We will list this matter after four weeks since the notice has to be for 28 days,” the bench, which also comprised justices BR Gavai and BV Nagarathna, said.
Appearing for the state, senior lawyers Kapil Sibal and Sidharth Luthra said the suit was listed before the bench perhaps because the state government had also sought an interim order to restrain the CBI from lodging any fresh case and from proceeding in other cases till the apex court’s final decision.
Sibal and Luthra added that the suit involves a pure question of law.
At this, the bench said that the state government will have the liberty to approach it in case any urgent directions are required in the next four weeks.
The state’s ruling Trinammol Congress alleges that after the Bharatiya Janata Party lost the state elections it has embarked on a vendetta using central agencies to target the state and its leaders. The BJP claims that after the election results were announced, the TMC unleashed violence on its (the former’s ) workers and supporters.
Last week, the state also appealed the SC against the Calcutta High Court’s order on a CBI probe into post poll violence in the state.
Underlining that the TMC government had in November 2018, withdrawn general consent to carry out a probe in the territory of the state, the suit maintained that registration of 12 cases by the central agency despite withdrawal of consent was an instance of “constitutional overreach” by the Union government.
The state said that the CBI has no inherent jurisdiction to conduct a probe in any part of the state, including railway areas, till the time it obtains a prior sanction. Claiming that the agency has been exercising its powers in an “unconstitutional manner”, the suit said the registration of cases by the CBI was an encroachment on the legal rights of the state.
The petition demands annulment of all 12 cases registered by the CBI and to restrain the agency from lodging any fresh cases.
