New Delhi: Today is the last day in the term of Enforcement Directorate director Sanjay K. Mishra, who many extensions created a controversy for the Union government. Though the Supreme Court had earlier held Mishra’s extension to be “illegal”, it later allowed him to continue till September 15 “taking into consideration the larger public interest”.
The Union government had insisted that it was important for Mishra to continue in his post because a country review of the UN’s Financial Action Task Force for India is currently underway – a claim that experts had contested. However, despite the Union government’s assertions on the importance of the ED director’s role in this process, it has not named Mishra’s successor yet.
A Union home ministry official told The Telegraph that the ED director was appointed according to the provisions of the Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003. The Union government appoints the director on the recommendation of a panel comprising two vigilance commissioners and the secretaries of home, finance and the department of personnel and training, with the central vigilance commissioner as chairperson. The former director is also consulted.
“So far there is no clarity on whether the panel has finalised any name for the new director,” the official told the newspaper.
By an order on November 19, 2018, Mishra was first appointed the ED director for a period of two years. His term would expire in November 2020. In May that year, he reached the retirement age of 60.
Through an office order on November 13, 2020, his appointment letter was modified retrospectively by the Union government and Mishra’s term of two years was altered to ‘three years.’
In September 2022, the Supreme Court bench of Justice L. Nageswara Rao upheld the extension, saying that such retroactive revisions are only allowed in the “rarest of rare cases” but that no further extension can be given to Mishra.
Several petitioners challenged this 2020 order, along with two 2021 ordinances promulgated three days before Mishra’s retirement date, amending the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946, and the Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003. Bills from these ordinances led to the legalisation of the extension of tenures of the CBI and ED chiefs for a year at a time till five years.
Last year, 2022, Mishra was given another extension. This third extension and the amendments to the CVC Act were challenged afresh.
This article was first published by The Wire
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