Communications minister Kapil Sibal on Friday came in for sharp criticism from the Supreme Court for his assertion that the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s projection of a `1.76 lakh crore loss in the sale of 2G spectrum licences was erroneous, with the court describing his statement as “unfortunate and irresponsible” while the matter was being investigated by the CBI.
Reminding the government that the attorney-general had given a commitment to the court that the 2G scam would be probed in right earnest, a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly described Mr Sibal’s statement at a press conference a few days back as “unfortunate” and said it expected him to have “behaved” in a more responsible manner.
“This (Sibal’s statement) is unfortunate. The minister should behave with some sort of responsibility,” the bench observed, before passing a short order which said: “In our opinion the CBI, which is conducting investigations into what is known as the 2G scam case, is expected to carry out the investigation without being influenced by any statement made by anybody in the press or otherwise.”
The Supreme Court made these strong comments while issuing notices to the Centre, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and 11 telecom companies on a second petition for cancelling the 2G licences, filed by former law minister Subramanian Swamy, over their “failure” to roll out spectrum services in areas for which they had signed the letters of intent on January 10, 2008. All respondents were directed to submit their replies by February 1.
The 11 companies issued notices are Etisalat, Uninor, Loop Telecom, S Tel. Videocon, Allianz Infra Tech, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Dishnet Wireless and Vodafone-Essar. They had earlier been issued identical notices on another PIL.
The court also agreed to “consider” Dr Swamy’s plea to restrain the department of telecom from taking any step for “compounding” the violation of the “rollout obligations” by these companies on imposing “nominal penalty”.
As Dr Swamy had not made a specific prayer on the “compounding” issue, the court allowed him to include it in the petition with an amendment after he claimed that as per his information the DoT had already set in motion a process to this effect.
“We will consider your prayer, you make a prayer,” the bench told Dr Swamy, who argued that Mr Sibal’s statement attacking the CAG was virtually a step in the direction of letting these companies go scot-free by imposing minor penalties.
While referring to the December 16 order of the court, in which it had taken cognisance of the CAG report for monitoring of the investigation, Dr Swamy said if such a statement comes from a minister in charge of the DoT, it was bound to “obstruct” the investigation by the CBI and other agencies.
The bench said that no laxity would be permitted in the investigation. “So far as the CBI is concerned, in this case it is virtually functioning under the supervision of this court. We don’t think anybody can influence the investigation.”