After a 10-day long break due to Dussehra holidays, the Supreme Court will take up the crucial hearing in the 2G scam case on Monday with the examination the Central Bureau of Investigation’s 500-page odd file to verify the authenticity of former finance secretary D. Subbarao’s statement recorded by the agency, relied upon heavily by it and the government to give a clean chit to home minister P. Chidambaram for his role as finance minister in fixing spectrum price.
As Central Bureau of Investigation counsel K.K. Venugopal in his unfinished arguments had told the apex court that the statement of Mr Subbarao, now the governor of Reserve Bank of India, recorded by the agency as a witness under Section 161 of CrPC was a complete “evidence” on the sequence of events that led to the sale of 2G spectrum by former communications minister A. Raja in alleged violation of the policy, a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly has sought to examine the entire papers to cross check the facts.
The 500-page documents mainly contain voluminous correspondence among the Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet secretariat, finance ministry, communications ministry and department of telecom and Trai since 2005, seized by the Central Bureau of Investigation after registration of the case.
When the hearing was adjourned on September 29, the bench had pointed towards certain specific letters and notes emanating from finance ministry during 2008 to the CBI counsel to seek his clarification on Mr Subbarao’s statement and Mr Venugopal could not finish his reply and stated that he would need at least 45 minutes more to close his arguments.
So far, the CBI counsel had virtually “toiled” hard to justify the agency’s stand that no case is made out for questioning of Mr Chidambaram amidst pointed queries from the court related to certain documents, particularly March 25, 2011 “controversial note” to PMO sent by the finance ministry under Mr Pranab Mukherjee putting a question mark on Chidambaram’s role and the “minutes” of January 30, 2008 meeting between Mr Chidambaram and the then telecom minister Mr A. Raja.
The minutes of January 30, 2008 meeting also recorded by Mr Subbarao, had clearly stated that Mr Chidambaram in the said meeting had stated that the price of the “start up spectrum” fixed as per the 2003 police (on the basis of 2001 entry fee) would not be “revisited” and it should be treated as “closed chapter”.
It was also decided in the meeting that the revision of price and introduction of the mechanism for sale of spectrum through auction should only be considered for future allocation, the minutes said.

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‘Cong adopting double standards’
Patna, Oct. 9: BJP on Sunday said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has gone all out to defend home minister P. Chidambaram in 2G scam even as the latter was facing the same charge as former telecom minister A. Raja.
“The nature of charges and evidences against both Chidambaram and Raja are identical, causing enormous loss to the exchequer in the 2G scam,” BJP national spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad told reporters.
But, the Congress and the Prime Minister have chosen to defend Mr Chidambaram and repose their full trust in him but left Mr Raja to fight his own battle as he belonged to an alliance partner DMK, he said.
Observing that the Prime Minister’s clean chit to Mr Chidambaram did not absolve him of the corruption charges in the 2G scam, Mr Prasad reminded that Mr Singh had also given clean chit to Mr Raja at least on three occasions between 2009 and 2011. — PTI