New Delhi: With the January 24 meeting of the high-powered committee (HPC) tasked with selecting the next director of the Central Bureau of Investigation ending inconclusively, the government has drawn up a list of 11 senior police officers with prior experience at the agency to help the search process.

The committee comprises Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and leader of the Congress is the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge. The earliest the three are expected to meet is January 30 or even January 31.

The 11 names have been extracted from the broad pool of Indian Police Service officers from the 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1985 batches. This was in response to a request from Kharge, who said it would make the task of selecting the new director easier.

Of these, the senior-most is Rina Mitra, a 1983 batch officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, currently posted as special secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs in New Delhi.

Mitra has had a five-year stint at the CBI and is widely considered one of the most capable persons for the job. The only catch is that she retires at the end of January and if the HPC is not able to meet and take a decision before Thursday, the country will lose the chance of breaking the glass ceiling at the CBI, which has only seen male directors to date.

The officer with the longest experience in the CBI is Javeed Ahmad from the 1984 batch, who put in more than 12 years.  He is a former director general of police in Uttar Pradesh. However, the fact that he was purged by the Yogi Adityanath government in 2017 and shunted off as director of the Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narain National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science is an indication that he may not find favour with the BJP-led government at the Centre.

Other 1984 batch officers include two favourites of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – the controversial former CBI special director, Rakesh Asthana, and Y.C. Modi of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre who is currently head of the National Investigation Agency.

Asthana, a Gujarat cadre officer, cannot be considered for the post of CBI director as an FIR has been lodged against him by the agency in a corruption case and his request to have it quashed was rebuffed by the Delhi high court.

Y.C. Modi, too, is under a cloud, given the scathing words used by the Gujarat high court in 2011 when it acquitted 12 persons who had been arrested and prosecuted for the Haren Pandya murder  by a CBI team he led.

The team had a "blinkered" approach and "botched" the case, the court said. While the CBI has appealed the high court judgment and the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra appears to have taken up the matter on an urgent basis, a judgment on the matter cannot come in time for the HPC to disregard what the high court observed about Y.C. Modi's competence as an investigator. Besides, a petition has also now been filed in the Supreme Court demanding that Pandya's murder be freshly investigated.

The other 1984 batch candidates are Rajni Kant Mishra, who currently heads the Border Security Force, S.S. Deshwal, head of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, V.K. Johri from the Research and Analysis Wing, and Rajesh Ranjan of the Bihar cadre, who is head of the Central Industrial Security Force.

Among the 1985 batch officers, H.C. Awasthi and Arun Kumar have more than two years left in service before they retire and would be in the reckoning for the top CBI job in January 2021 as well.

O.P. Galhotra, former DGP of Rajasthan and currently director general of the state's home guards – a de facto demotion effected by the new state government – is the eleventh name on the list.

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