SC to pronounce verdict on probe against Chidambaram

SC to pronounce verdict on plea for probe against Chidambaram

The Supreme Court will on Thursday pronounce its judgements on the petitions seeking a direction for a probe into the alleged role of Home Minister P Chidambaram in 2G spectrum scam and for cancellation of 122 radiowave licences granted during the tenure of A Raja as Telecom Minister.

The judgements will be pronounced by a bench comprising justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly which had reserved its verdict on the plea for probe against Chidambaram and for cancellation of licences of spectrum on October 10 and March 17 respectively last year.

The unanimous verdicts on both the petitions would be pronounced by Justice Singhvi.

Since Justice Ganguly is retiring on Thursday, he will be sitting in a bench headed by Chief Justice of India S H Kapadia.

The petitions on both the issues were filed by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) and Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy.

The role of Chidambaram in the 2G scam was raised in the Supreme Court by the petitioners who had pointed out that there was evidence on record showing that the decision regarding pricing of spectrum was taken jointly by him and Raja.

A Finance Ministry note to the PMO signed by Pranab Mukherjee was also taken on record by the apex court in which it was stated that the scam could have been averted had Chidambram suggested the policy of auction instead of first-come-first-served policy on allocation of spectrum.

The Centre and CBI had vehemently opposed any probe against Chidambram who was the Finance Minister at the time of allotment of spectrum in 2008. They had maintained that Chidambaram was not in direct communication with the then Telecom Minister A Raja in determining the price of the radio waves.

However, Swamy and the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) had refuted the claims of CBI and the Centre that Chidambaram was not in the picture till January, 10, 2008, when the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) headed by Raja issued 122 Letters of Intent (LoIs) to telecom companies without following the policy of auction.

Swamy and CPIL's counsel Prashant Bhushan had contended Chidambaram was "consistently" informed of what was going on and "till November 30, 2007, Chidambaram was apprised of what Raja was upto".

Swamy and Bhushan said the Finance Ministry officials were for allocation of spectrum through auction but they were overruled by Chidambaram. Swamy said there there were documents to show that Raja and Chidambaram met four times on the issue and had a meeting of minds in the commission of the offences.