New Delhi: The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government has finalised its strategy to counter Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy's petition to investigate Union Home Minister P Chidambaram's alleged role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam in the Patiala House Court of Justice OP Saini.
Taking a cue from Supreme Court's observation that the Department of Telecom (DoT) did not listen to advice of the Finance Ministry while going ahead with the first-come, first-serve policy in allocating 2G spectrum in 2008, the Government has decided to go all out to defend Chidambaram.
The strategy was finalised at a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Telecom and HRD MInister Kapil Sibal, Defence Minister AK Antony and Chidambaram on Thursday evening.
After hearing Swamy's petition the bench comprising justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly referred the matter to the trial court, saying that its order should in no way influence the proceedings before the court while declining to give direction to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the issue.
The apex court said that the trial court should decide the matter within two weeks. The matter will now be heard on February 4 in the court of Justice Saini.
Swamy had moved court seeking a probe against former finance minister and current Home Minister P Chidambaram. He had argued that Chidambaram should be made a co-accused in the spectrum scam along with former telecom minister 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. "I would have been dissatisfied if the court had said that there was no case against Chidambaram," Swamy said.
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 the Finance Ministry cannot be overruled by the Telecom Ministry, it was impossible for the then telecom minister A Raja to move ahead without the concurrence of Chidambaram, who was the then finance minister.
Swamy has insisted that despite Chidambaram recognising the fact that the most transparent method of allocating the spectrum would be through auction, he did not oppose the pricing on the basis of 2001.
Even when the Prime Minister favoured the auction of spectrum, Raja and Chidambaram jointly decided on spectrum pricing and allowed the licenses to be traded, and conveyed their joint decision to the Prime Minister. Chidambaram also overruled his own officials in this regard.
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