New Delhi: The Meghalaya government has withdrawn ‘general consent’ to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate cases within the state, making it the ninth state to do so since 2018, the Indian Express reported on Saturday, March 5.All the states which had withdrawn this consent in the past had been ruled by opposition parties, however, the current Meghalaya government is led by Conrad Sangma’s National People’s Party (NPP), which is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).Government officials either chose not to comment on the decision or were unavailable, according to the Express report which, however, mentioned that Sangma himself told local reporters outside the state assembly on Friday afternoon that it was “normal procedure” and that the decision had been made “quite long ago” without providing a specific date.The CBI is governed by the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, 1946. Section 6 of the DSPE Act states that no member of the Special Police Establishment shall be allowed to exercise the powers and jurisdiction afforded them by the Act without the consent of the concerned state government.This consent can either be ‘general’, giving the CBI the freedom to pursue cases within the concerned state, barring which consent to investigate must be taken by the agency on a case-by-case basis.Therefore, once general consent has been withdrawn by a state government, the central agency cannot register fresh cases for investigation in the states without their explicit consent.The CBI, however, retains the power to investigate cases even in states where that have not given it their consent, if the case is registered in a different part of the country but involves individuals present in the concerned state.Moreover, the Calcutta high court, while hearing an illegal mining case, recently ruled that the CBI cannot be stopped from investigating an employee of the Union government simply because they were in a state which has not given the agency consent. This ruling has been challenged in the Supreme Court.Also read: Centre’s Move to Subvert CBI and ED Undoes Years of Effort to Secure Their IndependenceSince the BJP came to power in the Union government in 2014, nine states (including Meghalaya now) have withdrawn general consent to the CBI. The first of these was Mizoram in 2015, then under Congress chief minister Lal Thanhawla. However, even after the NDA-alliance partner Mizo National Front (MNF) government took charge in 2018 with chief minister Zoramthanga in 2018, the consent was not restored.Thereafter, in 2018, N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP)-led Andhra Pradesh government withdrew consent. Hours after the move, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) did the same in West Bengal.However, after Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress Party took charge of Andhra Pradesh in 2019, CBI consent was restored.In 2019, Bhupesh Baghel’s Congress government in Chhattisgarh revoked consent, following which, in 2020, the governments in Punjab (Congress), Maharashtra (Shiv Sena), Rajasthan (Congress), Kerala (Communist Party of India – Marxist) and Jharkhand (Congress) did the same.The CBI began to witness a backlog of cases after these states withdrew general consent to the agency. In November last year, the CBI, in an affidavit, told the Supreme Court that 150 cases dealing with forgery, bank fraud, misappropriation, among others, were pending as the agency waited for approvals from the abovementioned states.Supreme Court Justice S.K. Kaul, who was hearing the case, had said that this was, “Not a desirable position”.
