CBI works independently: Congress

New Delhi, April 13 (IANS) Senior Congress leader Rashid Alvi on Saturday refuted claims of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that the CBI was working under pressure, saying the investigative agency has been functioning independently.

"CBI is not under any pressure and is working independently," Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi told reporters, in reply to allegations from the BJP that the government was not allowing the CBI to work independently."Now the Supreme Court has taken up the matter, so now we can only wait for the SC verdict. BJP has a tendency of providing false information." "CBI will file the affidavit in front of the SC, and then everything will become transparent", he added.

On a news report in the The Indian Express that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government "vetted" the coal blocks allocations probe status report before it was submitted to the Supreme Court, Alvi said the matter was pending before the apex court.

"The matter is pending in the Supreme Court and we do not interfere in court proceedings," he said.

The report said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe report, submitted last month, had been vetted by Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and officials of the Prime Minister's Office.

It further said that senior CBI officials, including Director Ranjit Sinha, were summoned by Kumar days before the status report was filed. During the meeting with Kumar, several amendments in the status report were suggested and some also incorporated by the CBI, the paper suggested.

India's official auditor had last year revealed that the lack of transparency in the allocation of coal blocks to private players resulted in the loss of a whopping Rs.1.85 lakh crore($37 billion) to the national exchequer as on March 11, 2011.

Criticising the Janata Dal United's statement that the CBI is working according to the Congress' orders, he said, " JD (U) should apologise for making such remarks."

Ealier in the day, speaking on the coalgate scam, member of the Central Parliamentary Board of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sushma Swaraj alleged that it was an attempt on part of the Congress-led UPA Government to save Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Mr. Alvi has told us the biggest joke.

He expects us to believe that the CBI works independently of the office in power at the centre or the BJP.

Presently it is the Congress Party which is manipulating it.

Earlier, when the NDA was in power, the BJP exploited it. Maybe not to the same extent, but they did.

It is for this reason that when the parliament debate was on. none of the parties truly wanted the CBI out of government control.

As I had said in my earlier blogs, the CBI is the pet poodle of the Congress party.