Supreme Court quashes extension granted to ED Director Sanjay Kumar Mishra as ‘illegal’

The Supreme Court on Tuesday held as illegal the fresh extension given to Sanjay Kumar Mishra as Director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) but allowed him to continue in his position till July 31, 2023, acknowledging the concerns raised by the Centre regarding the peer review of international body FATF.

On November 18 last year, the Centre gave Mishra another one-year extension to continue as the ED Director. This was the third extension granted to his tenure. He took charge at the post on November 19, 2018 for a two-year tenure.

Hearing the matter today, the Supreme Court ruled that the extension granted to Mishra in November 2022 was illegal and in violation of the mandate of the Supreme Court’s 2021 judgment in the Common Cause case that he should not be given further extension.

The top court had held in September last year that no further extension will be granted to Mishra. The direction came in a plea challenging the second extension granted to him in 2021. The Supreme Court had rejected that plea and stated that then Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003 says that ED chiefs shall hold office for “not less than two years” which cannot be read to mean “not more than two years”.

On Tuesday, the Court upheld the amendments made to the Central Vigilance Commission Act and the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act which allows the Centre to extend the term of the heads of ED and CBI by up to three years beyond the tenure of two years as earlier specified in the said Acts.

A three-judge bench of Justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, and Sanjay Karol was hearing a batch of petitions challenging Mishra’s appointment and the recent amendment to the Central Vigilance Commission Act. The petitioners included Congress leaders Jaya Thakur, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, and party spokesperson Saket Gokhale.

The bench had reserved its order in the matter in May this year. The plea challenging the extension of the ED Direcotr’s tenure came in the backdrop of a prolonged political controversy that has seen the Opposition accuse the central government of using central agencies, including the ED, to target Opposition leaders.