On July 11, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court ruled that the extensions granted to Sanjay Kumar Mishra, Director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), since November 2021 were illegal, and asked the Centre to appoint a new chief by July 31. Within two weeks, the same Bench, in a special hearing on July 27, extended the tenure of Mr. Mishra till September 15, citing “public and national interest”, while partially allowing the Centre’s plea for his continuation till October 15.
That the Government of India had to move a special application citing “extraordinary and unusual” circumstances to allow his continuation at the anti-graft agency shows the importance Mr. Mishra, a 1984-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, has acquired in the present administration. He is only the second bureaucrat for whom this government brought an Ordinance to keep him in the position. The first was former Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Nripendra Misra.
Mr. Sanjay Kumar Mishra was first appointed interim Director of the ED for three months in October 2018 before he was made the full-time chief in November 2018 for a two-year fixed tenure. In November 2020, when his tenure was coming to an end, the Union government quietly extended it with retrospective effect, making it a three-year tenure against the initial two years, though Mr. Mishra had attained superannuation in the interregnum. This was challenged before the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2021 that there should not be any further extension to him, which prompted the Centre to bring in an Ordinance for his continuation at the post.
Greater powers
Under Mr. Mishra, the agency has acquired greater powers and targeted political opponents of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), civil society activists and other critics of the government. Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan called him a “political henchman” of the government entrusted with the job of targeting Opposition parties and its leaders and others who are not on the side of the Centre.
The agency under him investigated Opposition politicians such as former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and his parliamentarian son Karti, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, Karnataka Congress chief D.K. Shivakumar, NCP leader Sharad Pawar, former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, AAP Ministers Manish Sisodia and Satyender Jain, and Tamil Nadu’s powerful Minister Senthilbalaji.
Helmed by his tight control, the agency tightened scrutiny on senior political functionaries, former Ministers and powerful leaders. It registered some 4,000 cases and conducted 3,000 searches in the past five years. Surprisingly, politicians or functionaries associated with the BJP, either at the Centre or at States, hardly figured in the probes undertaken by the agency. Mr. Mishra has expanded the scope of the agency, roping in outside experts and professionals to implement the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) or the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, brought in 2018, and the civil sections of the Foreign Exchange Management Act. Those who have tracked Mr. Mishra’s career graph vouch for his skills and manoeuvrability. He is said to be thorough in his understanding of the complexities of taxation matters, corruption and finance.
As a bureaucrat, he maintains a low profile, hardly seen networking or publicly meeting political figures or bureaucrats. He hardly talks to the media.
“He is a rare bureaucrat who was a blue-eyed boy of the late [Congress leader] Ahmed Patel during the UPA era and now the virtually indispensable figure in the present dispensation. He is a power-obsessed bureaucrat who will do everything to remain in power,” said a retired Secretary of the Government of India.
Another bureaucrat who worked in the Finance Ministry during the Pranab Mukherjee era, said that Mr. Mishra had become more powerful than even the Revenue Secretary at that time.
