Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 21 August 2013

A charter for the CBI

• “There is a distinction between the constitutional responsibility of the Minister for the exercise of executive power in respect of public order, police and enforcement of Criminal law on the one hand and statutory duties of the Police and Magistrate to exercise powers vested in them by the Police Acts and the Code of Criminal Procedure.
• It is the constitutional duty of the Minister, as head of the Department in charge of the police, who are instruments of maintenance of public order and enforcement of criminal law, to ensure that the Police discharge their functions and exercise their powers properly and diligently.
• But beyond that, the Minister cannot go and issue specific instructions as to the manner of exercise of their statutory powers. That would amount to interference.”
• The Home Minister is responsible to the legislature if there is “gross negligence or general failure or neglect to perform its statutory functions by the police in preventing the commission of offences or of bringing offenders to justice or there is a general failure to maintain law and order.”
• The very foundation of the rule of law, a part of the unamendable “basic structure” of the Constitution, is a police force which is free from political interference. British works on constitutional law discuss the constitutional status of the police; Indian works discuss the police only in the context of Centre-State relations.
• Justice Kapur cited the Calcutta High Court’s judgment in the famous “ gherao ” case which held that no government can interfere in the enforcement of the law of the land by the police whose powers are defined by the Cr.P.C. In a classic ruling, Lord Denning said, “I hold it to be the duty of the Commissioner of Police, as it is of every chief constable, to enforce the law of the land.
• He must take steps so to post his men that crimes may be detected, and the honest citizens may go about their affairs in peace.
• He must decide whether or not suspected persons are to be prosecuted and, if need be, bring the prosecution or see that it is brought, but in all these things he is not the servant of anyone, save of the law itself. No Minister of the crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observation on this place or that, or that he must, or must not, prosecute this man or that man. Nor can any police authority tell him so.
• The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law and to the law alone.”
• The National Police Commission pointed out in its second report that, apart from the “political sources,” industrialists, businessmen et al also try to influence the police. S.3 of the Police Act, 1861 confers on the States powers of “the superintendence of the police force.”
• The commission noted that “in the guise of executive instructions… attempts have been made to subordinate police personnel to executive requirements.”
• Article 227 confers powers of “superintendence” over all courts and tribunals. It does not imply power to interfere unless the law is violated.

Legal status

• The CBI was set up by a Government Resolution on April 1, 1963.
• It acquired a legal cover under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946 — “a special police force” to be called “the DSPE.”
• On May 20, 1988, the Union Minister of State for Home and Personnel, P. Chidambaram, told a CBI Officers’ conference that the Centre was examining conferment of a legal status on the CBI.
• “Should it not get legal status to investigate or should we beg State Governments to give us consent to investigate?”
• Section 6 of the [DSPE] Act of 1946 bars the CBI from exercising any of its powers in a State “without the consent of the Government of the State.”
• The Constitution makes “police” a State subject exclusively while the CBI is a Union subject. Unlike in the United States, all offences, whether under a Central or State law, are enforced by the State police.
• The Estimates Committee 1991-92 recommended in its 13th Report to the Lok Sabha on April 6, 1992, the “enactment of a new law laying down the organizational structure of the CBI, functions to be discharged by it, types of offences which it can investigate and providing for conferment of powers of Police laid down in Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, on the members of the CBI.”
• Also recommended was a constitutional amendment to provide for extension of the CBI to any State without the consent of its government.
• A draft Constitution Amendment Bill and a draft Bill on the CBI were sent to the Home Ministry on June 12, 1990.

Need to respect autonomy

• It is unlikely that the States or political parties would consent to a Constitutional amendment.
• That is no reason for not giving the CBI a charter, to replace the archaic Act of 1946, delete the curbs imposed since, codify its status as a police force and define precisely the powers of “superintendence” which properly belong to the Union. Section 6A was introduced in 2003 to override the Supreme Court’s ruling in the hawala case.
• The CBI cannot conduct even a preliminary inquiry into an offence committed by Joint Secretaries “and above.”
• The government’s affidavit of July 3, 2013 in the Supreme Court offers to bar directions “to investigate or dispose of any case in a particular way.”
• This should be amplified in the light of the past record.
• The affidavit does not propose deletion of Section 6A.
• It proposes an Accountability Commission to probe into allegations of misbehaviour against a CBI official.
• State Police Acts should emulate this and also draw on the model of the Police Complaints Authority set up by S.83 of the U.K’s Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984.

Air Force lands heavy-lift aircraft near LAC

• The Indian Air Force recently landed its C-130J Super Hercules transport plane at the world’s highest and recently-activated airstrip at Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) in Ladakh, close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) where Indian and Chinese troops had witnessed a three-week long stand-off in April.
• In what appeared to be a subtle but strong message to China, the IAF demonstrated its ability to use the heavy-lift aircraft to induct troops, supplies, improve communication network and also serve as a morale booster for maintenance of troops positioned at such heights in Ladakh region.
• “A C-130J Super Hercules landed at DBO, the highest airstrip in the world at 0654 hours.
• “With this enhanced airlift capability, the IAF will now be in a better position to meet the requirements of our land forces who are heavily dependent on the air bridge for sustenance in these higher and inhospitable areas,’’ the IAF said.
• The aircraft of the special operations squadron is capable of undertaking quick deployment of forces in all weather conditions, including airdrops, besides landing on unprepared or semi-prepared surfaces.
• The IAF reactivated the airfield in 2008 with the landing of an Antonov-32 there from Chandigarh. The airstrip was last put to use in the 1965 war with Pakistan.
• “Once again this strategic base in the Northern Himalayas gained importance when it was resurrected and reactivated by the IAF along with the Indian Army and made operational when a twin engine AN-32 aircraft from Chandigarh landed there after a gap of 43 years [in 2008],’
• The DBO sector saw about 50 Chinese soldiers crossing the LAC and setting up a remote camp in Depsang plains in April. The stand-off ended when both sides agreed on May 6 to pull their forces back to positions held before the confrontation in the highly strategic region that abuts the Karakoram Highway joining Pakistan to China.
• As LAC is not yet demarcated, both sides have differences in their perception, leading to patrols often entering into each other’s territory.

Sources: Various News Papers & PIB