Supreme Court: Hearing the petition challenging the appointment of the incumbent CVC, K V Chaudhary, and vigilance commissioner (VC) T M Bhasin on ground that they did not have “clean record” and a non-transparent procedure was followed while appointing them, the bench of Arun Mishra and M M Shantanagoudar, JJ said that it would not go into the aspect of “political favouritism” but only examine whether a person appointed to the posts of central vigilance commissioner and vigilance commissioners met the criteria of having “impeccable integrity”.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner NGO Common Cause, alleged that despite several representations against KV Chaudhary, the government appointed him as the CVC as he was their “favoured candidate”. To this, the Court said that the question before it was of impeccable integrity and not political favouritism.
Attorney General K K Venugopal told the Court that the decision taken by the selection committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the Leader of Opposition was unanimous. On the allegations, he said that all these aspects were considered and discussed by the committee before arriving at a decision and the inquiries as alleged by the petitioner were “closed” after deliberation. He also placed before the court the files relating to the procedure and discussions by the committee on the issue of appointment of the CVC and VC.
The Court asked Attorney General to go through the files before arguing the matter has listed the matter for hearing on 07.09.2017.
Source: PTI
