New Delhi: Former Enforcement Directorate (ED) chief Sanjay Kumar Mishra was earlier this week appointed a full-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, PTI reported.
Mishra, a retired Indian Revenue Service officer of the 1984 batch, was appointed in the rank and pay of secretary to the Union government.
His five-year tenure as director of the ED saw the financial crimes agency – granted extraordinary powers through amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act – come under criticism for its alleged misuse to target the government’s political opponents.
Appointed director of the ED in 2018, Mishra’s tenure was to originally expire in 2020.
But he was given multiple extensions by the Union government, to the extent that when he demitted office in September 2023 his was the second-longest tenure in its history, per PTI.
He was initially given an extension in 2020 through a government order and subsequently with the aid of modifications to the law.
However, since the extensions after the initial one came after the Supreme Court issued a writ barring his tenure from being extended further, the top court deemed in July 2023 that these extensions were “illegal”.
It ultimately allowed Mishra to stay in office till September that year as the Union government insisted it was important for him to do so because a country review of the UN’s Financial Action Task Force for India was underway – a claim that experts had contested.
The Economic Advisory Council that Mishra will move on to is an “independent” body whose terms of reference includes “analysing any issue, economic or otherwise, referred to it by the prime minister and advising him thereon” as well as “addressing issues of macroeconomic importance and presenting views thereon” to the prime minister.
