Decrypting Kejriwal's grouse: Didn’t he know his officer faced graft charges?

“Modi is a coward and a psychopath…When Modi cudn’t handle me politically, he resorts to this cowardice (sic),” tweeted Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. This outpouring of anger and venom against the prime minister followed a raid on the offices of his most favourite officer in the Delhi government — who is also his principal secretary, Rajendra Kumar — by the CBI. On a busy day on Twitter, Kejriwal also said:

I am the only CM who dismissed, on my own, a minister n a senior officer on charges of corruption and handed their cases to CBI(1/2)

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 15, 2015

If CBI had any evidence against Rajender, why didn't they share it wid me? I wud hv acted against him(2/2)

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 15, 2015

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There are three issues here: First, didn’t Kejriwal know about the charges against Kumar? If he really didn’t, then it’s a serious matter because he doesn’t know what’s going on in his government, and his colleagues and officers are not briefing him properly. A senior bureaucrat, former Delhi Dialogues Commission member-secretary Ashish Joshi, who was shunted out after he reportedly had a spat with AAP’s political appointee in the commission Ashish Khaitan, had in June this year lodged a detailed complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bureau against Kumar. Joshi had alleged that Kumar, as director of Education and later Secretary (IT), Secretary (Health) and Commissioner (VAT), had allegedly set up various companies to award work orders of departments without tenders — which caused the government financial losses. He charged that Kumar formed a company — Endeavours Systems Pvt Ltd — along with some persons in 2007 when he became secretary (IT). During this period, he got this company empanelled with public sector undertakings such as ICSIL. Being a PSU, ICSIL can do work for departments without tenders. Joshi’s complaint provided details. In July, the ACB forwarded Joshi’s complaint against Kumar to the CBI. It’s ironic that Kejriwal didn’t know of the charges. What if Kumar turns out be another Jitendra Singh Tomar for the Kejriwal government? Kejriwal and his party colleagues cried themselves hoarse against the Modi government when the then law minister Tomar was arrested in a fake degree case. Tomar was removed only after a court sent him to jail. The AAP then had egg on its face and Kejriwal blamed Tomar for misleading him. [caption id=“attachment_2544402” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Arvind Kejriwal. Reuters[/caption] Second, raids by law-enforcement agencies always have a certain degree of secrecy about them. Third and most important, Kejriwal should take a second look at what his party had said in May 2014 in the aftermath of the Supreme Court verdict that struck down the ‘Single Verdict’ clause in the CBI Act. The court had said that law-enforcement agencies didn’t require any prior permission from government to prosecute an officer of the rank of joint secretary and above before persecuting him. Here’s how the party had responded to the verdict on its website: The Aam Aadmi Party welcomes the long awaited judgement of the Supreme Court striking down the ‘Single Directive’, introduced by Section 6A of the CBI Act and also introduced in the CVC Act, which required the CBI to take the consent of the government even for beginning corruption investigations against government officials of the level of joint secretary and above. This provision was introduced in 2003 in the CBI and CVC Acts by the NDA government even after the Supreme Court had declared the same ‘Single Directive’ as unconstitutional in the Hawala case in 1999. Both the NDA and the UPA governments had taken advantage of this absurd provision to protect senior Babus who were involved in corruption along with the Ministers themselves who in brazen conflicts of interest then denied permission for even investigating their Babus. “The Supreme Court has held that this requirement of government permission for investigating high level corruption is promoting corruption and is also discriminatory since the Constitution prohibits discrimination between senior and junior public servants on issues of corruption. The court has also held that such a provision requiring the CBI to take government permission is also discriminatory in as much as the same corruption can also be investigated by the State Police which does not require any such prior permission. This will now free the CBI to investigate scores of corruption cases which are held up due to the non grant of permission by the government.” “But despite this judgment, the CBI still remains a ‘Caged Parrot’, as the Supreme Court had put it. The CBI officers continue to remain under the administrative control of the government which decides their transfers, postings, promotions, suspensions, and most importantly, the post retirement jobs of senior CBI officers including the Director. No wonder then that the CBI is busy closing cases in most of the Coal Allotment cases and is very deliberately shielding the Ministers involved in the dishonest allocation of Coal Mines. Unfortunately, despite the overwhelming public opinion in favour of freeing the CBI from the administrative control of the government and placing it under an independent Jan Lokpal, the Congress and the BJP ganged up to bring a lame Lokpal Act in which the CBI still remains under the administrative control of the government and the Lokpal (which will be selected by the political class) will be forced to rely upon government controlled agencies for its corruption investigation. It will take an electoral revolution in the country to free this ‘Caged Parrot’ from the control of those who themselves need to be investigated for corruption. Just because an officer works as principal secretary (a Union joint secretary-rank position) of Delhi’s chief minister, should the law be applied differently to him? This can’t be an anti-corruption crusader’s argument. The difference between May 2014 and now is that Kejriwal has now been in power in Delhi for about a year.