While all eyes are on the Supreme Court, which will hear on Friday petitions challenging the ‘effective removal’ of the Director, CBI, speculation is rife in Delhi that the Government will hand over reports in sealed covers and pray for the status quo to continue till the court has time to study the documents.

Even as Alok Verma’s right hand man in the agency, A.K. Sharma, who was Joint Director (Policy) was also asked on Thursday to proceed on leave, sources in the Government claimed that the SIT inquiry into the feud in the CBI could be over in a matter of weeks and hence the Supreme Court need not intervene at this stage.

Contrary to speculation in a section of the Government, a Supreme Court bench headed by Ranjan Gogoi will hear the petitions challenging the midnight coup in the Central Bureau of Investigation early on Wednesday. The other two judges on the bench are Justice SK Kaul and Justice KM Joseph. Earlier there was speculation that the CJI, being a member of the committee that appoints the CBI Director, could refer the petitions to a different bench. It was however the then CJI J.S. Khehar who was part of the committee that had appointed Alok Verma in February, 2017 the DCBI and not Justice Gogoi.

While CBI Director Alok Verma, who has been asked by the Government to proceed on leave, has himself challenged the direction, NGO ‘Common Cause’ has also filed a petition praying that the order be struck down as illegal. Both Verma and ‘Common Cause’ have argued that the Central Vigilance Commission, on whose recommendation the Government claims to have installed an interim director, does not have the power to remove or transfer the director; that this required the approval of the three-member committee comprising the PM, the CJI and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, which appoints the director.