Head hunting

The CBI top job is up for grabs. The shortlisted officers have reputations that precede them

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

ON MAY 17, the CBI office in Kolkata became the arena for a political battle when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee barged into the office and accused the BJP of political vendetta. Mamata’s target was the CBI headquarters in New Delhi, where interim CBI director Praveen Sinha, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer, had asked his sleuths to arrest Trinamool Congress ministers Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee and Madan Mitra and former minister Sovan Chatterjee in connection with the Narada sting case.

Sinha’s sleuths got the sanction to prosecute the Trinamool MLAs just days after Mamata was sworn in as chief minister on May 5. As Mamata prepares for a long-drawn fight, the bigger question is whom will the government select as the next CBI director in the coming days.

The CBI director has a fixed two-year tenure and the new director will serve until 2023. The central agency has been without a full-time director since R.K. Shukla, a 1983-batch IPS officer, retired on February 2. Sinha, a 1988-batch officer, was given interim charge. The government has now formulated a shortlist of heavyweight officers from the 1984, 1985 and 1986 batches. At the top of the list are 1984-batch IPS officers Rakesh Asthana, director general of the BSF with additional charge of the Narcotics Control Bureau, and Y.C. Modi, DG of the National Investigation Agency.