The Congress led UPA government has today finalized its strategy to contradict Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy's petition to investigate Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram's role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam in the Patiala House Court of Justice O.P. Saini.
Taking a sign from the Supreme Court's observation that the Department of Telecom did not listen to the decision of the Finance Ministry while going ahead with the first-come-first-served policy in allocating the spectrum licenses in the year 2008, the government has decided to go all out to defend Chidambaram.
The strategy was finalized on Thursday evening at a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Telecom and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and Defence Minister A.K Antony and Chidambaram.
After hearing Swamy's petition, the bench comprising of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly referred the matter to the Trial Court stating that its order should not in any way influence the proceedings before the court while declining to give direction to the CBI on the same.
The Apex Court said that the Trial Court should decline the matter within two weeks. The matter will be heard on February 4th in the court of Justice Saini.
Swamy had moved a court seeking a probe against former Finance Minister and current Home Minister P. Chidambaram. He argued that Chidambaram should be made a co-accused in the in the spectrum allocation along with A. Raja.
Reacting to the court's order, Swamy said that he was satisfied and that the trial court was perfectly competent to decide on whether Chidambaram should be probed.
Swamy in his plea had stated that the Finance Ministry repeatedly pointed out that spectrum allocation could not be determined by the entry fee of 2001, and the Finance Ministry earlier backed the market-discovered price for the spectrum.
He had also claimed that since Finance Ministry cannot be overruled by the Telecom Ministry, it was just impossible for the then Telecom Minister A. Raja to move forward without the concurrence of the then Finance Minister, Chidambaram.
Swamy has also insisted that despite Chidambaram recognizing the fact that the most transparent method of allocating the spectrum would be through the method of auction and moreover he did not oppose the pricing on the basis of 2001.
Reported by
AR
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