The fast-paced hearing on the controversy surrounding the CBI before the Supreme Court on Friday went without a mention of stay sought by the premier probe agency's chief Alok Kumar Verma on the Centre's decision to divest him of powers and sending him on leave.


While Verma's plea sought stay on the Centre's order asking him to proceed on leave and giving the interim charge of his post to M Nageswara Rao, a 1986 batch Odisha-cadre IPS officer, the issue did not come up during the brief hearing.


The hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph commenced with senior advocate Fali S Nariman, appearing for Verma, opening the arguments.


Nariman started his arguments by referring to the apex court's 1997 Vineet Narain judgement, which relates to probe of allegations of corruption against high-ranking public officials in India, the Central Vigilance Commission Act 2003 and amendments in the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act.


He argued that CBI Director is appointed for a tenure of two years by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of India as per provisions of the DSPE Act.


"The question is whether the tenure could be breached at any time?," he told the bench and said that consent of the committee was needed for transferring the CBI Director. Nariman also argued that in this matter, orders were passed by the government which divested Verma of his duties and send him on leave.


He said after the orders divesting Verma of his duties were passed, on October 23 another order was issued appointing Rao to perform the duties of the CBI Director.


However, before the issue of stay on government's order could be raised in the court, the bench told Attorney General K K Venugopal that it would examine the issues.


"The only thing which we need to look is what interim order to pass. Without wasting the time, we will tell you what we have in our mind," the CJI told Venugopal.


The bench said CVC's inquiry should be completed within 10 days and should be conducted under the supervision of a judge of the apex court and Rao would not take any policy decision.


It said the Centre and CBI should place before it in a sealed cover the list of decisions taken by Rao from October 23 till today. The bench said that at this stage, the CVC has to see whether there was any prima facie ground to proceed in the matter and for this, it does not have to go through thousands of pages of documents for this. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for CVC, said that several documents were required to be looked into during the inquiry and 10 days time would not be sufficient. --  PTI