The Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday asserted in the Supreme Court the question of probing the alleged role of Union Home Minister P. Chidambaran in the 2G spectrum allocation when he was the Finance Minister did not arise. It also stated that the Union government could not give instructions to it on what it should probe.
Senior counsel P.P. Rao, appearing for the government, submitted a written note to the Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly hearing the 2G spectrum case that the new documents filed by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy would be studied and considered by the CBI as usual and “may by covered in the next status report.”
‘Autonomous body'
CBI counsel K.K. Venugopal, however, told the Bench: “Someone [Centre] can't put words into our [the CBI] mouth and say we will investigate. I strongly object to this statement. The CBI is an autonomous body and we don't take instructions from anyone. We can't be forced to investigate something.”
Virtually asking the Centre not to speak on behalf of the CBI, Mr. Venugopal defended Mr. Chidambaram, saying the March 25, 2011 note sent by the Finance Ministry to the PMO was nothing but “conclusions drawn from a 500-page file prepared by the then Finance Secretary D. Subbarao.”
He said these 15 documents formed part of a 500-page file, which “we had examined and the final report was filed in the trial court.” He made it clear that there was no question of examining the 15 documents as such examination “does not arise”
Mr. Rao said, “Once any new material comes to the notice of the CBI, then it is its duty to study the material. If they say they have already examined the documents, then it is fine.” He, however, opposed any CBI probe against Mr. Chidambaram, saying: “there is no need to pass any order on Dr. Swamy's application.”
Opposes court monitoring
Quoting a catena of cases, Mr. Rao strongly opposed the Supreme Court monitoring further investigation into the case. He contended that the monitoring should come to an end once the charge sheet was filed in the competent trial court. Any direction considered necessary for further investigation, if any, or to proceed against any other person, was within the domain of the trial court concerned.
Justice Ganguly told Mr. Rao: “the court will have to balance the considerations — viz. larger public interest on the one hand and objections on technicalities or procedural niceties on the other.”
Swamy's claim
However, Dr. Swamy claimed that the CBI ignored the documents provided by him and conducted a truncated investigation.
“The material I have submitted clearly shows that Mr. Chidambaram was in the know of the commission of offence. Mr. Raja [former Telecom Minister] alone cannot be held responsible for the scam,” he said.
Not interested in truth
He said the CBI was not interested in getting at the truth. Since the trial court could not order a CBI probe against Mr. Chidambaram, he was asking the Supreme Court to order such a probe based on the fresh documents.
On March 25, 2011, Deputy Director in the Finance Ministry P.G.S. Rao sent an office memorandum to Joint Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office Vini Mahajan on the allocation and pricing of 2G spectrum. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee approved the note after personally inspecting the 11-page document.
The controversial note categorically stated that the Department of Telecom would have been forced to cancel the 2G licences sanctioned by Mr. Raja, if the Ministry of Finance under Mr. Chidambaram, stuck to its original demand for auctioning the initial ‘start-up spectrum' of 4.4 megahertz each allotted to the 2008 licencees.
