While hearing the petition challenging the extension of Enforcement Director Sanjay Mishra third time, the Supreme Court has said that the amendments brought by the Center for extension of service of directors of ‘ED and CBI’ are fine but extension for third time is invalid in Law.
Supreme Court said to center government that Sanjay Mishra cannot be allowed extension of service beyond July 31. You have enough time to appoint a new director. According to the service extension of the Center, Sanjay Mishra’s tenure was till 18 November. This order of the Supreme Court has shocked the central government.
Actually, the term of the director of ED was completed on 18 November 2022 but the central government had extended his term for one year. Sanjay Mishra was appointed as the director of ED on 19 November 2018.
In 2021, through an ordinance, the central government made a provision that the tenure of the directors of ED and CBI could be extended by five years. During the tenure of Sanjay Mishra, who is counted among the officers of clean image, ED investigated many high profile cases related to financial frauds like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi. During this, for the first time in Sanjay Mishra’s tenure, ED recovered crores of rupees from the accused and banks also recovered more than Rs 20 thousand crores.
Not only this, during the tenure of Sanjay Mishra, the ED had also seized the property of Iqbal Mirchi, a close aide of Dawood Ibrahim and the separatist leaders of Jammu and Kashmir in the case while disclosing terror funding.
Apart from this, during the tenure of Sanjay Mishra, the ED also questioned many opposition politicians including Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, DK Shivakumar, Praful Patel, Abhishek Banerjee. Whereas during his tenure many other leaders of opposition parties including Anil Deshmukh, Nawab Malik, Sanjay Raut, Partha Chatterjee were also arrested.
