The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday agreed to hear a plea next week by an NGO challenging the January 10 order of the Centre appointing IPS officer M Nageswara Rao as interim director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The matter was mentioned for urgent listing before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner NGO Common Cause and RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj, appealed to the bench, also comprising Justices N L Rao and and S K Kaul, to hear the plea this Friday.

CBI’s Additional Director Rao was given the charge of interim chief on January 10 till the appointment of a new director. This comes after a high-powered committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi removed Alok Kumar Verma as the chief of the probe agency on charges of corruption and dereliction of duty.

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