While BJP’s opposition to make the national investigating agency’s (NIA) director-general SC Sinha a member of the national human rights commission (NHRC) post retirement is well known, it now emerges that senior opposition leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj took on prime minister Manmohan Singh directly during Friday’s meeting to announce Sinha’s name.

According to sources with knowledge of the development, Swaraj, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, took out a white paper at the meeting itself and was ready to write her dissent and hand it over to the PM then and there.

Jaitley, her counterpart in the upper house, took on the PM and pointed at the long list of retired IPS officers who have been posted as governors and members of UPSC and NHRC under the UPA government. Should the government not try to accommodate other sections of the bureaucracy in these key posts, he asked the PM.

Sources said the meeting, convened and chaired by Singh on Friday night to select two members of NHRC, was held in a heated and tense atmosphere.

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Besides leaders of the opposition of both houses, other members of the NHRC selection panel — home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar and Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson PJ Kurien — were also present in the meeting.

SC Sinha, a 1975-batch IPS officer of Haryana cadre, is slated to retire as the director-general of NIA, on October 31 this year, or as per further orders issued by the government. He is expected to assume charge in the rights panel subsequently.

The BJP is opposed to Sinha’s appointment as an NHRC member since the party believes top officers of India’s premier investigative and intelligence agencies like the CBI, IB and NIA could become pliant, and neutrality of their offices could be compromised, if they see they are eligible for other high-profile career during their service term or post retirement. The party is also said to be opposed to Sinha’s candidature since the NIA under him is investigating ‘rightwing saffron terror’ and links of some leaders to Samjhauta Express blast, among other cases.

Meanwhile, NIA, the country’s premier anti-terror agency, is also grappling with a problem of finding Sinha’s successor.  The home ministry tried reaching out to Prakash Mishra, a 1977-batch IPS officer and DGP of Orissa, to head the agency but Mishra is reported to have has declined the offer.

The next choice is K Saleem Ali, a 1978 batch IPS of Manipur-Tripura cadre who is special director with the CBI, but the home ministry is running out of options since Saleem is also set to retire at the end of this year.