CBIvsCBI: Supreme Court to pronounce verdict in Alok Verma case tomorrow

The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict tomorrow in the petitions filed by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Alok Verma and NGO Common Cause challenging the decision of the Central government to send Verma on leave..The verdict will be pronounced by a Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph..A slew of Senior Counsel had appeared in the matter. Senior Advocate Fali S Nariman appeared for Alok Verma, while Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave represented Common Cause. Attorney General KK Venugopal appeared for Union of India, while Solicitor General Tushar Mehta represented the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). ASG PS Narasimha appeared for CBI..Senior Advocates Mukul Rohatgi, Rajeev Dhavan and Kapil Sibal were also allowed to argue as officers of the court though they were appearing for Rakesh Asthana, AK Bassi and Mallikarjun Kharge respectively..This case reached the Supreme Court in October 2018 after the Centre send Alok Verma on leave effectively divesting him of his powers as the Director of the CBI. The DoPT and the CVC issued notices in a midnight move on October 29 announcing this decision..Through the same notice, the Centre also divested CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana of his powers. This unprecedented move came in the wake of infighting between Verma and Asthana..The agency, under Verma, had registered an FIR against Asthana in a bribery case based on a whistleblower’s account. The concerned case involved the meat exporter Moin Qureshi. However, in the same case, Asthana had alleged bribery on Verma’s part prior to the lodging of the FIR..Asthana approached the Delhi High Court for quashing of the FIR against him bringing the CBI infighting to the Courts. This was immediately followed by the Centre’s decision of ousting both Verma and Asthana, which came to be challenged in the Supreme Court by Verma..The Supreme Court after hearing all the parties had reserved its judgment on December 6..Read a detailed account of the arguments here.