The Centre on Wednesday appointed Rahul Navin, an Indian Revenue Service officer of the 1993 batch, as the director of the Enforcement Directorate.
Navin has been appointed the Enforcement Directorate director for a period of two years, the department of personnel and training said.
He was appointed as the acting chief of the central law enforcement agency in September 2023 when the tenure of Sanjay Kumar Mishra ended.
In July 2023, Navin’s predecessor Mishra was granted an extension till September 2023 by the Supreme Court in the “larger public interest”. This came after the court held that two extensions granted to Mishra by the Union government were illegal.
Mishra had been appointed as the Enforcement Directorate director for a period of two years on November 19, 2018. His tenure was extended in 2020 for a year by the Centre.
Following this, the non-governmental organisation Common Cause filed a public interest litigation, seeking for the extension order to be set aside as they claimed that Mishra’s three-year tenure violated Section 25 of the Central Vigilance Commission Act.
In September 2021, the court directed the Union government not to extend Mishra’s tenure further.
However, the Centre introduced two ordinances to ensure that the directors of the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation could have tenures of up to five years. The ordinance allowed Mishra to continue for another year.
Navin’s appointment as the director of the Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday means that the agency did not have a full-time chief for 11 months.
On August 7, the Supreme Court observed that the Enforcement Directorate should focus on the quality of prosecution, citing the low rate of conviction in money-laundering cases, Live Law reported.
This came after Nityanand Rai, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, told Parliament on August 6 that only 40 out of the 5,297 cases registered between 2014 and 2024 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act had resulted in convictions.
Also read:
- Selective arrests, slow trials: Why courts are increasingly pulling up the Enforcement Directorate
- Explained: How the Supreme Court has handed a free pass to the Enforcement Directorate
- How the Modi government has weaponised the ED to go after India’s Opposition
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