The big spat in the CBI could impact these high profile cases against the opposition

New Delhi, Oct 25: The spat between the top two officers in Central Bureau of Investigation has not just embarrassed everyone, but has also defeated the morale of several good officers within the agency.

While the Director and Special Director were sent on leave and a new interim chief appointed, the matter is far from over. The Supreme Court will hear a petition filed by CBI director, Alok Verma, who challenged the government's decision to send him on leave.

Following these incidents, there was plenty of re-structuring that took place within The CBI and new teams were formed to probe cases which are pending. While there were complaints regarding the officials in the existing set up that were being looked into, there are several cases that are under probe, where the opposition is concerned.

Saradha scam, IRCTC case, the probe against former Himachal Pradesh chief minister, Virbhadra Singh and the Rose Valley scam are all being probed by the CBI.

More importantly after Verma had taken over, he had formed an SIT to probe key corruption cases against politicians. Asthana who headed this SIT was probing the AgustaWestland case, the ambulance scam in Rajasthan and also the cases against Karti Chidambaram.

The cases relating to Vijay Mallya, Narada Sting operation, INX Media case concerning former union minister, P Chidambaram are also under probe by the CBI. The CBI is also probing case after it raided the office of Rajendra Kumar, the private secretary to Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal.

These are all very high profile cases and many of them are in their last stages of investigation. This big shake up comes just six months before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. CBI officials say that these cases will not suffer. Yes there have been changes at the top, but it is business as usual, the officer says.

Other officials believe that with so much muck out in the open, the morale of many could be down. Some of the cases were at a crucial stage and with the re-structuring there would be some changes that would be needed as a result of which the probe could slow down a bit.