The chief of the Enforcement Directorate, Sanjay Kumar Mishra, has been granted another year of expansion for the third time in the job. Mr. Sanjay will accomplish five years in the post next year with this extension. In 2021, under a new law, Sanjay was elected to become the first to receive one year of service extension.

The announcement was made after the government enacted an executive directive to expand the incumbency of investigation agency heads. Prior to the extension, heads of the central agencies were granted only a two-year tenure. The edict made it feasible to render them overall five years in a post.

Sanjay Mishra was almost about to retire the day after the decree and was granted an extension until November 18, 2022. His initial extension announced on November 13, 2020, was questioned in the Supreme Court. However, the judges denied meddling, stating the CVC Act doesn’t restrict the incumbency to two years and extensions can be allotted to conclude pending cases.

The opposition has questioned and denounced the authority to increase the incumbencies of probe agency heads. Numerous parties, such as the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, argued that “it was a plan to benefit administrators who toed the government line.”

The Congress stated that the government has employed the Central Bureau of Investigation and the ED as “henchmen to usurp power and destabilise elected governments,” and they are currently being benefitted.

The ED implements two main ordinances in the country to restrain black money (the illegal Prevention of Money Laundering Act and the Foreign Exchange Management Act.) The agency’s top post is an extra secretary rank in the Union government.