New Delhi, Feb 2 (IANS) The Supreme Court Thursday said the trial court will decide on Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy’s plea to make Home Minister P. Chidambaram a co-accused in the 2G spectrum allotment case.
The apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K. Ganguly said that keeping in view the fact that Swamy had already filed an application before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special judge, “we do not consider it proper to entertain his prayer for issue of a mandate to the CBI to investigate Mr. P. Chidambaram”.
The apex court said this while disposing of Swamy’s application seeking direction to the CBI to investigate the role of Chidambaram in fixing the price of 2G licences, as then finance minister, along with former communications minister A. Raja.
Justice Singhvi said: “It is made clear that this order shall not in any manner prejudicially affect the applicant’s case in the matter pending before the special judge, CBI and the concerned court shall decide the applications already filed by him or which he may file in future without being influenced by this order.”
The court said that there was no merit in the plea that the monitoring of the 2G case should be stopped because the CBI has already filed charge sheets in court of special judge, CBI.
“In our opinion, there is no merit in the argument of Shri P.P. Rao that the monitoring of 2G case should be stopped because the CBI has already filed charge sheets in the court of special judge, CBI.” Rao appeared for the government.
The court noted: “It is not in dispute that although the CBI has filed charge sheet in April 2011 and a supplementary charge sheet in August 2011, the investigation into some of the facets of 2G case is yet to be completed and the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate have filed reports showing further progress made in the investigation.”
The judgment said this in response to the submission made by Rao that once the trial court had taken cognizance of the offence then the trial would be deemed to have commenced and the prayer for summoning any other person as an accused can be made only before the trial court, which in this case is the special judge, CBI.
Rao in his plea told the court that there was a ‘Lakshman Rekha’ to the court monitoring of probe by the investigating agency.
He said this while opposing the plea seeking direction to the CBI to probe the role of Chidambaram in fixing 2G licence prices and grant of spectrum.
Swamy in his application said that under the 2003 decision of the empowered group of ministers, approved by the cabinet, the pricing formula for spectrum was required to be finalised jointly by the department of telecommunications (DoT) and the finance ministry.
He said this meanth that the pricing formula for the spectrum would not have been valid and binding until it had the concurrence of both the DoT and the finance ministry.
