Maharashtra has second highest pending CBI cases….Prafulla Marpakwar
MUMBAI: The acute shortage of judges for the special courts and inadequate manpower have adversely affected the performance of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), as a result, there has been a sudden spurt in pendency of cases across the country. As per the official records of the premier investigating agency, after New Delhi, the largest number of cases are pending in Maharashtra. Out of the 9,910 cases pending as on January 31, 1759 are in New Delhi, 1062 in Maharashtra, 891 in West Bengal, 848 in Uttar Pradesh, 584 in Tamil Nadu and 526 in Jharkhand. Out of the 1,062 cases in Maharashtra, 43 cases were pending since the last 20 years.
A senior official said, in view of the large number of pendency of cases, the then minister of state in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan had taken the initiative of setting up 71 special CBI courts. Accordingly, 54 special courts were operationalized last year. “Six courts have been sanctioned for Maharashtra, out of which three have started functioning,” he said. The official said so far as Maharashtra is concerned, besides the most sensitive Adarsh scam, involving leading politicians, babus and defence personnel, the CBI had booked the post-master general for his alleged involved in the Thane land scam, Pune customs commissioner, Thane income tax commissioner, high-ranking LIC officials involving ihousing loan scam and Western Railway’s protection force commissioner. It is also probing into the Telgi scam and Malegaon bomb blast case.
“One of the reasons for the huge pendency is the delay in obtaining permission for launching the prosecution against a public servant. Both the CBI and state anti-corruption bureau (ACB) are facing the same problem. The procedure for granting permission needs to be simplified. It was a rare instance that the permission to initiate proceedings against former BMC chief Jairaj Phatak was granted in record time,” he said. Despite the acute shortage of manpower, the official said, the performance of the CBI was not bad as compared to the functioning of the state ACB. “CBI’s conviction rate was well over 60% as against 28% of the state ACB,” he said.
The official pointed out that most cases referred to the CBI are directly supervised either by the high court or the apex court, as a result, there was close monitoring of all the cases being investigated by the CBI.