Bihar keeps a CBI veto on its own officers while widening the agency's list

Bihar's Home Department, in a notification dated 3 September and issued by Principal Secretary Pankaj Kumar, reset the terms on which the Central Bureau of Investigation may work in the state. The order is framed under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. It supersedes every previous notification on the subject. The result is a two-tier regime.

On one side the state widens general consent. The CBI may investigate, without a fresh nod each time, a longer list of offences involving employees of the Government of India, central public sector undertakings, and private persons caught in the same case. That list now includes offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, the Information Technology Act, 2000, cybercrime, and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 as amended. The update brings the old 1946 consent language in line with the codes that replaced the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code.

On the other side a proviso takes the automatic power away where it matters most to Patna. If the case involves public servants appointed in connection with the affairs of the Government of Bihar, or persons in any corporation, company or bank owned or controlled by the state, or any institution that receives or has received financial assistance from the state, prior consent of the Bihar government is mandatory. After the CBI sends a proposal, the state will decide case by case.

Copies went to the Union Ministry of Personnel, the CBI director, the Bihar director general of police and the relevant departments. Police headquarters in Patna said the wider standing consent covers central employees and central bodies working in the state. It does not cover the state's own establishment.

Section 6 is the legal hinge. The CBI is not a statutory all-India police force. It draws power from the DSPE Act. Inside a state it needs that state's consent, either general or specific. Several states have withdrawn or narrowed general consent in the past decade, forcing the agency to seek permission file by file when the accused is a state officer. Bihar has now written that limit into a fresh notification while giving the agency a cleaner mandate against central staff and private co-accused.

Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary's government is therefore doing two things at once. It is telling Delhi that the new criminal codes are recognised and that central employees in Bihar are not shielded. It is also telling the CBI that a Bihar officer, a state corporation employee or staff at a state-aided body is not available for a raid, a summons or an arrest until Patna says yes. How long those case-by-case files sit on a desk will decide whether the proviso is a filter or a wall.

The notification does not stop the CBI from asking. It does stop the agency from acting first and explaining later when the target draws a Bihar salary. That is the change that will be tested the next time a corruption complaint names a state official in Patna, not a central clerk.