New Delhi, November 24: Bharatiya Janata Party Rajya Sabha member and Ram Jethmalani on Saturday questioned his party's objection over the appointment of the new CBI director. Jethmalani wrote a letter to party president Nitin Gadkari saying, "BJP is wrong in questioning the appointment of CBI director."
Senior BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj had on Friday written letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying that appointment of the new CBI Director should not have been done when the Rajya Sabha Select Committee had recommended that such appointments should be done through a collegium.
The Prime Minister, however, rejected BJP's demand to hold in abeyance appointment of new CBI Director Ranjit Sinha and termed as "unwarranted" insinuation the charge that the decision was to preempt the procedure recommended by the Select Committee on Lokpal. In a letter to Jaitley, Manmohan Singh said the premier investigating agency could not be kept without a head pending the enactment of the Lokpal and "the question of keeping the new appointment in abeyance does not arise".
He said "insinuation that the appointment was made to preempt the procedure recommended by the Select Committee is wholly unwarranted and devoid of any merit." Manmohan Singh added: "I also refute the suggestion that the appointments to this post in the past by the UPA Government were motivated by collateral considerations."
He said even as the top post in the CBI could not be kept vacant. "Under the circumstances the government has, in public interest, made the appointment in accordance with the provisions of the CVC Act as presently applicable and the extant procedures, which had been set in motion much earlier," the Prime Minister said in the letter.
Sinha, a 1974 batch officer of Bihar cadre, has been appointed as the next CBI chief. He is presently the Director General of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force.
Jethmalani, who is known for making controversial statements, had recently "embarrassed" his party when he said that Lord Ram was a bad as he sent his wife Sita to exile for no specific reason. "Ram was a bad husband. I don't like him at all. Just because some fisherman said something, he sent that poor woman (Sita) to vanvaas (exile). Lakshman was even worse. When Sita was abducted, Ram asked him to go find her as she was abducted under his watch. Lakshman simply excused himself saying she was his sister-in-law and he never looked at her face, so he wouldn't be able to identify her."
He was also engaged in a probity battle with the BJP president, whom he had been pressing to resign in the face of corruption allegations against him.
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