Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 2 (IANS) The Supreme Court will Thursday pronounce its verdict on a petition challenging the appointment of P.J. Thomas as the head of the country’s anti-corruption watchdog Central Vigilance Commission.

An apex court bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar will pronounce its verdict on a petition by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) challenging Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) Thomas’ appointment.

The petitioner said Thomas was facing a criminal charge sheet in a case related to palm oil import in Kerala and he was not an “outstanding civil servant of impeccable integrity”.

The verdict is likely to address many issues related to the implementation of the apex court verdict in Vineet Narain case related to Jain hawala (money laundering) issue.

In the Vineet Narain case the court held that the CVC should be an “outstanding civil servant of impeccable integrity”.

The court indicated that it may lay further guidelines for making the appointment of the CVC more transparent and making the selection process more criterion based.

Chief Justice Kapadia said that he did not want that the matter (of the CVC’s appointment) to come back to the court again and again.

The court also suggested that it may speak about the criterion for the preparation of a panel of three candidates for appointment as the CVC.

The petitioner argued that the moment the process of selecting the panel is initiated by the department of personnel and training, the service details of the civil servants under consideration, including their stint in their cadre states, should be taken into account and not just their brief bio-data of their posting in the central government.