A regular bench of the Supreme Court on Friday felt that the appeal of Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy against rejection of his plea by special court for investigating home minister P. Chidambaram’s alleged role in the 2G case needs to be dealt by a special bench monitoring the case.
Though Justice G.S. Singhvi, who heads the special bench monitoring the 2G case, was one of the judges in the regular bench with Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya both the judges were of the view that the case be placed before a newly-constituted special bench.
The special bench now has Justice A.K. Patnaik with Justice Singhvi to monitor the 2G case after the retirement of Justice A.K. Ganguly in February.
Besides, Mr Swamy, main petitioner Centre for Public Interest Litigation also has field an application seeking examination of Mr Chidambaram’s role as finance minister in UPA-I in deciding the 2G price along with then communications minister A. Raja.
Mr Swamy and CPIL counsel Prashant Bhushan told the regular bench that the matter needed to be considered by the special bench in the wake of a series of orders passed by it in the course of monitoring the 2G case.
In view of their plea, the regular bench referred their petitions to Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia with a request that the registry be directed to place the matter only before the monitoring bench.
Both Mr Swamy and Mr Bhushan have placed on record copies of a bunch of documents, including several letters exchanged among PMO, ministries of finance, communications, law and the department of telecom on the sale of 2G spectrum in a bid to make a case for CBI investigation against.