The Supreme Court will hear next week a petition challenging M Nageswara Rao‘s appointment as the interim chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Rao was appointed last Friday after Alok Verma was sacked as the chief the agency by a high-powered panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rao then reversed all decisions taken in the previous two days by Vefrma who had been reinstated in his job by the Supreme Court barely 48 hours earlier. A NGO then filed a petition seeking a direction to cancel the government’s order appointing Rao as the acting director of the agency. The NGO said his appointment was “illegal, arbitrary, mala fide and in violation of the Delhi Police Special Establishment (DPSE) Act”. The matter was mentioned for urgent listing before a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi.

Nageswara Rao, a 1986-batch Odisha cadre IPS officer, first took charge as interim chief under dramatic circumstances on October 23, around 2 am, after Mr Verma was divested of his powers and sent away.

After his second removal last week, Verma was transferred as chief of fire services. He, however, refused to take up the new job and submitted his resignation.

–Indian Legal Bureau