The Centre on Sunday moved an ordinance to extend the tenure of Enforcement Directorate (ED) director and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director to five years. The current tenure of the CBI and ED directors is 2 years.
President Ram Nath Kovind has given his assent to the ordinance. The Central government brought the Central Vigilance Commission (Amendment) Ordinance, 2021, days before the start of the winter session of Parliament, which is scheduled to begin from November 29.
A Supreme Court bench – headed by Justice LN Rao – recently gave a judgment in the case linked to the extension of ED chief SK Mishra, who took charge in 2018, underlining the extension of tenure should be done only in rare and exceptional cases.
The Central government is expected to table a law in the Parliament to replace the same. In the failure of a law being enacted, the ordinance would lapse in a period of six weeks.
Currently, the CBI is headed by 1985-batch IPS officer Subodh Kumar Jaiswal, who was appointed in May 2021 for a two-year period. While the ED is headed by IRS officer Sanjay Kumar Mishra, who was appointed to the post in November 2018. In November 2020, his tenure was extended by another year by the Centre.