Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
By: Anshul Vipat
A change in guard in Maharashtra is likely to give breather to for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which will soon be able to freely register corruption and fraud cases in the state again.
For the past two years, the central agency has been struggling to investigate cases in the state. According to the data presented by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, as many as 168 requests (involving an amount of Rs 29,040.18 crore) from the CBI have been pending with the Maharashtra government under Uddhav Thackeray in the last two years. Out of them, 9 requests are pending for longer than a year and 38 for longer than six months.
West Bengal follows Maharashtra with 27 pending requests for cases worth Rs 1,193.80 crore - 1 each pending for one year and between 6 months and one year and 25 cases are pending for less than six months. Punjab had five pending for over six months and four for less. Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have four, six and seven requests pending with the total amount involved standing at Rs 678 crore.
|
Name of the state |
Total amount involved (in crores) |
|
Maharashtra |
29040.18 |
|
West Bengal |
1193.80 |
|
Punjab |
255.32 |
|
Rajasthan |
12.06 |
|
Jharkhand |
330.57 |
|
Chhattisgarh |
80.3 |
|
Total |
30912.28 |
When it comes to bank fraud cases, Maharashtra tops the list of pending requests – there are 101 requests from the CBI of cases worth Rs 20,312.53 crore are pending. Punjab has 12 requests for investigating fraud worth Rs 298.94 crore and West Bengal Rs 293.64 crore worth fraud in six cases pending.
The CBI is governed by the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, 1946. Section 6 of the DSPE Act states that no member of the Special Police Establishment shall be allowed to exercise the powers and jurisdiction afforded them by the Act without the consent of the concerned state government. Nine states have withdrawn ‘general consent’ to the CBI to investigate cases within the state since 2015, most ruled by opposition parties. They are Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Mizoram and Meghalaya.
CBI has time and again claimed that this has tied its hands. In November last year, the Supreme Court too had expressed concern over CBI’s submission that 78 percent of its requests for sanction to investigate cases were pending with state governments that had withdrawn consent to the CBI.
