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New Delhi: The government on Tuesday constituted a Group of Ministers (GoM), headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, to prepare a draft law to insulate CBI from external influence and a draft affidavit within three weeks in the Supreme Court which had made a scathing observations on the agency.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved the constitution of the GoM to consider the matter relating to an appropriate law being made to provide independence to CBI and ensure its functional autonomy, according to an official statement.
Besides Chidambaram, other members of the GoM included Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, Law and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal and Minister of State for Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) V Narayanasamy, it said.
The GoM will prepare the draft law and the draft affidavit to be filed in the Supreme Court in the context of a writ petition within three weeks, the statement said.
The DoPT will ensure that agenda papers and minutes of the meeting are expeditiously forwarded to the Prime Ministers Office and the Cabinet Secretariat, it added.
CBI Director Ranjit Sinha will also give his inputs to the newly-constitued GoM.
The Group of Ministers will deliberate on ways to further strengthen CBI's autonomy and safeguard it from any kind of outside interferences, they said.
The government's move came after the Supreme Court had indicted CBI for being a "caged parrot" of its political masters while hearing a case related to alleged irregularities in coal blocks allocation.
