SC questions basis of Raja telecom policy

While concluding the hearing in the 2G spectrum scam case on the issue of monitoring of the CBI probe, the Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned the very basis of the policy followed by former communications minister A. Raja and took exception to home secretary G.K. Pillai’s media interview on the Nirra Radia tapes.
While questioning the change of entire complexion of granting the 2G licences within 45 minutes by Mr Raja on January 10, 2008 while allocating letter of intents (LIOs) first to those who came with bank drafts and bank guarantees, the court asked “why the price was at 2001. They (companies) are not BPL people. they are huge companies.” “Why don’t you (government) give petrol at the price of 2001 today. What kind of policy this is? This is an absurd policy, if you call it a policy,” a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly observed.
However, when arguments were centred around “Radia tapes”, the Supreme Court disapproved home secretary Mr Pillai’s public comments on the issue, specially when he was the authority to grant the sanction to the income-tax department to allow phone trappings to unearth certain tax frauds.
Referring to the arguments of counsel for Centre for PIL, Prashant Bhushan when he dealt with “Radia tapes” and how it had exposed the “malaise” in the country’s system of governance and published transactions being termed only as “tip-of-the-iceberg”, the court took serious note of such remarks attributed to Mr Pillai.

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