The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Centre to absorb Rajeshwar Singh, an officer probing the money laundering cases in the 2G scam, as a permanent Deputy Director in the Enforcement Directorate within three days.
“The Central government shall confirm the permanent absorption of Rajeshwar Singh as Deputy Director within three days from today,” a bench led by Justice H L Dattu said.
The court censured the Centre for not complying with the directions of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), issued on December 24 last year, to absorb Singh on permanent basis with the ED.
“You (Centre) don’t obey the positive directions issued by the tribunal. The Delhi high court refuses to stay the order of the tribunal on your writ petition. Even then you kept waiting for eight months.
“We will pass an order asking you to give him permanent appointment with ED,” the bench said, adding that “this court had trusted this man for conducting the trial. Do you expect him to keep on fighting court cases and investigate the matter.”
It also clarified that the order of the CAT has to be complied with as the Centre failed to file a special leave petition in the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court refused to stay the tribunal’s order in the appeal.
Earlier the apex court had said that it will pass an appropriate order after hearing Singh as to whether he wants to continue with the ED or not. Raising the issue of Singh, BJP leader Subramanium Swamy had said that despite the apex court’s May 1 order he had not been reinstated into the investigation and it was not known “what powerful element are working” that he is out of the probe.
Singh had sought to recuse himself from the investigation as attempts were being made to destroy the case.
Swamy was one of the petitioners on whose plea the 2G licences were scrapped by the apex court which is monitoring the probe by the CBI and the ED.
