THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Vigilance and anti-corruption bureau director N C Asthana has issued a circular stating that the investigating officers need not strictly go by the advice given by the legal advisers of vigilance.In the circular issued to all the vigilance units, the director has said that even if they receive a particular legal opinion from vigilance legal advisers, they need to consider it only as a legal opinion, which means that the opinion is not binding on them.Sources in the vigilance department said that the circular was issued in the wake of multiple legal advisers giving differing interpretations about a case, to the extent that the legal advices are dominating the investigators."Even according to the law, the legal advices are not binding on the investigators. In the vigilance, the legal advices have been used for manipulating the cases at the behest of political masters as the appointment of legal advisers in the agency is political," a senior vigilance official said.This is not the first time a vigilance director is instructing the officials not to get carried away by the legal opinion from its advisers. Earlier, when DGP K J Joseph was the vigilance director, he had put an end to the tendency of going by the legal advice "At that time the trend was to give multiple legal opinions at the respective unit from the legal adviser in addition to the findings of the investigating official. This, again used to be scrutinised at the vigilance headquarters by a legal adviser there, and ultimately, the government is given four different choices in the report seeking prosecution sanction against an official. This gave enough breathing space for the political bosses to make a politically-motivated choice," sources said.At present there are seven legal advisers for the VACB in the state.

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