The Supreme Court has been ready to hear the demand to form a committee for the selection of CAG, the Comptroller and Monitor General of India. The court has issued a notice to the Central Government on the petition of NGO Center for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL). The court has associated this petition with the petition of Anupam Kulshrestha, a pending pending on this subject. Now both will be heard simultaneously.
CPIL’s petition states that the President is appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. In view of the importance of this post, selection of qualified and impartial person is necessary for this, therefore, the Supreme Court should order the selection of CAG through the Committee of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The bench of Justices Surya Kant and N. Kotishwar Singh did not begin to agree with this petition initially. He said that the court cannot change what is written about the appointment of CAG in Article 148 of the Constitution. The Constituent Assembly had a lot of debate about the fairness and freedom of the CAG. In order to keep the CAG post free from any influence, this arrangement was made in the Constitution that the person sitting in this post can be removed only through a Supreme Court judge process. Now the demand for change in their selection process will be like writing the constitution again.
Responding to this, lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioner, said that questions have been raised about the fairness of CAG in the recent past. The demand for forming a fair committee for selection of CAG cannot be called a fresh writing of the Constitution. By creating a committee, the selection will be in line with the feeling of the constitution makers in which they imagined the fair CAG. Prashant Bhushan said that the Supreme Court has also ordered to form a committee for the selection of CBI Director and Election Commissioners. This should also be done in this case.
Eventually the judges agreed to issue a notice on this petition. Prashant Bhushan also told him that the Supreme Court had issued a notice in January 2024 on a similar petition of former Deputy CAG Anupam Kulshrestha. Since then that petition has not been heard yet. The Center has not even filed an answer on it. On this, the judges talked about hearing on both the petitions. It should be noted that the petition of Anupam Kulshrestha has demanded the selection of CAG through the collegium of the Prime Minister, Lok Sabha Speaker, Leader of Opposition, Public Accounts Committee of Parliament and the collegium of Chief Justice of India.
Also read:-
Waqf Bill: ‘Let me tell you to Chandrababu, Nitish and Paswan, as long as the world is Muslim, you will remember your …’, Owaisi’s warning on the Waqf Bill