The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict on the petition of former law minister Subramanian Swamy seeking sanction from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to prosecute former telecom minister A. Raja in the 2G spectrum scam case, which the top court said has “shamed” all previous scams.
“This scam puts to shame all the other scams put together,” said a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly during the hearing before reserving the judgement.
The apex court also allowed Attorney-General G.E. Vahanvati a week’s time to submit a report, giving details as how many cases were held up with the CBI against public servants after completion of the investigation for want of sanction to proceed further in the court of law.
During the hearing, the bench put certain probing questions to Mr Vahanvati on the practicability of the government stand that sanction in the corruption cases against public servants could not be granted before filing of a formal complaint with the court of competent jurisdiction. The apex court cited certain instances where the trial courts had refused to entertain the complaints against politicians by private persons merely on the ground that they did not have sanction from the competent authority to file such complaints.