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47. The Single Directive cannot, therefore, be upheld as valid on the ground of it being permissible in exercise of the power of superintendence of the Central Government under Section 4(1) of the Act....

9. As observed in Subramanian Swamy v. Director: CBI , the single directive was stated to have been issued to protect decision-making level officers from the threat and ignominy of malicious and vexatious inquiries/investigations and to give protection to officers at the decision-making level and to relieve them of the anxiety from the likelihood of harassment for taking honest decisions. It was said that absence of such protection to them could adversely affect the efficiency and efficacy of these institutions because of the tendency of such officers to avoid taking any decisions which could later lead to harassment by any malicious and vexatious inquiries/investigations.

12. The validity of Section 6A of the DPSE Act has been challenged in Subramanian Swamy (supra) and the matter has now been referred to a larger bench for consideration in the following manner:

6. In short, the moot question is whether arbitrariness and unreasonableness or manifest arbitrariness and unreasonableness, being facets of Article 14 of the Constitution are available or not as grounds to invalidate a legislation. Both counsel have placed reliance on observations made in decisions rendered by a Bench of three learned Judges.