New Delhi: Calling on investigative agencies to distinguish between policymaking and policing, Union finance minister P. Chidambaram said Tuesday there were a number of cases where probe agencies and other authorities like the Comptroller and Auditor-General had “overstepped” their limits and tried to portray bona fide executive decisions as crimes or abuse of authority.
It was not the business of an investigating agency to lay down “rules of conduct”, the minister said, they must confine themselves to the issue of whether there was a violation of the law or not.
A day after PM Manmohan Singh said “errors of judgement” must be distinguished from criminal acts, it was the finance minister's turn to dwell at length on the functioning of investigative agencies, including the CBI.
Delivering the keynote address at the CBI's golden jubilee function, Chidambaram said: “Even where a rule has been prescribed, if there is a policy behind that rule, it's not the business of the investigating agency to question the wisdom of the policy or to suggest a different policy” — as long as reasons are given in support of a decision.
When asked as to who will decide if the departure from the policy is justified or not, he said the body of law that is developed on speaking orders says that the order must contain relevant reasons.
