Government today formed a Group of Ministers (GoM) to draft a law to provide for the independence of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and its functional autonomy. According to an official release, setting up of GOM was approved by the Prime Minister.

The five member ministerial panel will comprise of Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Home Minister, Sushilkumar Shinde, External Affairs Minister, Salman Khurshid, Law and Communications Minister, Kapil Sibal and Minister of State for Personnel, V Narayanasamy.

The panel has been mandated to prepare the draft law and draft affidavit to be filed in the Supreme Court within three weeks. The Supreme Court's direction on the issue came following an affidavit from the CBI Director, who admitted to have shared a draft coal block allocation probe report with former Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and two joint secretaries in the Prime Minister's Office and Coal Ministry.