The Supreme Court’s pressure seems to be working on the investigating agencies in the 2G scam case with the latest visible actions regarding the questioning of some key figures as the investigators exactly have 52 days in hand to show some real results in the status reports to the top court, which was very critical of the Delhi high court for not giving the 2G spectrum issue a serious consideration it deserved.
The Supreme Court’s heat on the CBI looked apparent with the agency issuing notices to former communications minister A. Raja for the first time after registering the FIR more than a year ago on October 21, 2009 against some “unknown persons” and also to corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, whose name surfaced with the publication of the transcript of her telephonic conversations with a scores of important persons.
In its order for expediting the investigation, a bench comprising of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly had said that “in our opinion, the division bench of the high court committed a serious error by dismissing the writ petition at the threshold ignoring that the issues raised by the appellant (NGO, Centre for PIL) whose bona fides have not been doubted, are of great public importance.”
Since CBI’s FIR had virtually remained dormant for nearly a year till the SC issued the notices to the Centre and the probe agencies on September 13, 2010, the Supreme Court would definitely like to see some concrete results about the “identification” of the accused persons in the status reports to be filed by the CBI, ED and income-tax department by February 10, 2011.
In the light of the precious time lost since registration of the FIR by the CBI and the dismissal of the petition of CPIL by the high court, the top court bench in its order had concluded that after examining the earlier status reports of the probe agencies and petitioner’s affidavits based on CAG and CVC reports, there was a strong “prima facie” case for constant monitoring of the investigation.
In this context, the top court also referred to the HC’s “single Judge” order of 2007 allowing a petition of telecom company S TEL against the advancing the cut-off date for submission of applications for 2G spectrums by Mr Raja at last moment through a press release on January 10, 2008.
The single Judge had held that there should be “no cap” on the number of service providers in any area.
The single judge had stated that there was no rational for fixing September 25, 2007 as “cut off date” and no justification for changing the “rules of game after the game had begun”.