New Delhi:
A trial court headed by Judge OP Saini is expected to decide shortly if Home Minister P Chidambaram should be made a co-accused in the 2G case for allegedly allowing former Telecom Minister A Raja to gift mobile network licenses and scarce second-generation or 2G spectrum at staggeringly low prices to companies he allegedly favoured. Judge Saini arrived at court at 10 this morning amid huge security.
Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy filed the petition that asks for Mr Chidambaram to be made a co-accused in the 2G case. As he left for court this morning, Mr Swamy told NDTV, "No one is above the law. Chidambaram has a lot of answering to do before the court. I have submitted all documents against him...2000 pages. I am confident that justice will be served."
This morning, Judge Saini allowed only Mr Swamy, the petitioner to enter the court room. Mr Swamy was quoted as saying, "I can smell the ambience in the court-room," suggesting that he has considerable legal experience, and his instincts suggest a verdict will arrive shortly.
Mr Chidambaram is at home, having cancelled an appointment at North Block, sources said.
Mr Swamy says that it was Mr Chidambaram's job as Finance Minister in 2008 to prevent Mr Raja from his alleged spree of nefarious licensing. He says that Mr Chidambaram was privy to the decisions that Mr Raja took. On matters like the pricing of spectrum, he should have intervened to protect the country's interests, he argues. Mr Raja maintains he briefed not just the Finance Minister but also the Prime Minister on every development as it emerged. He has also said that he would like to summon Mr Chidambaram as a witness in court. Mr Raja has just completed a year in jail.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court had refused to agree to Mr Swamy' petition demanding that the CBI investigate Mr Chidambaram's role in the telecom scam. The two-judge bench had asked Judge OP Saini's trial court to decide on that request within two weeks.
In another crucial judgement on Thursday, the court cancelled 122 telecom licenses issued by Mr Raja in 2008. It said using a first-come-first-serve policy to allocate national resources like airwaves is "fundamentally flawed", dangerous, and designed to benefit any one "with access to power corridors." The court, however, placed the blame firmly on Mr Raja. It said Mr Raja knew that Finance Ministry officials did not approve of his pricing of licenses and spectrum, and he deliberately chose not to consult with either Mr Chidambaram or his department.
The government maintains that the verdicts are not an indictment of either its governance or the Prime Minister and then Finance Minister P Chidambaram. Instead, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal argued, that the first-come-first-serve policy used by Mr Raja has been faulted by the court, and for this, the BJP must apologise to the country. Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh has said that the Supreme Court judgement cancelling the licenses of telecom companies is likely to be challenged by way of a review petition.
The BJP, however, said that the verdict established the government's collective failure to check Mr Raja as he conspired to favour companies by gifting them out-of-turn licenses at throwaway prices with free spectrum built into the deal. Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders said Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister need to explain their government's action. "This government is shameless," said Mr Jaitley. "It can't be that the people who control the UPA and the Congress are not responsible. The UPA chairperson has a lot of answering to do. So does the Prime Minister's Office and the Congress party," he said.
Critics of Mr Chidambaram found their case vastly strengthened late last year when a note sent by the Finance Ministry to the Prime Minister's Office was exhumed by a Right to Information application. Written in March last year, the note post-mortemed the events of 2008, and was meant to serve as an inter-department backgrounder. But it made the point that the Finance Ministry should have done more to enforce an auction upon Mr Raja. The Prime Minister was forced to respond that Mr Chidambaram enjoyed his confidence as Finance Minister in 2008, and continues to do so now. But the damage was done.
Mr Chidambaram has in his defence said that he tried at various points to insist that Mr Raja hold an auction to ensure that this scarce resource was sold at market prices.