The special court holding trial in the 2G scam case could not be convinced by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy to make a case of “criminal culpability” against Union home minister P. Chidambaram for CBI probe into the case on the basis of 31 crucial documents he had placed before the trial court.
Mr Swamy had placed 31 documents, including the controversial March 2011 note of the finance ministry to the PMO as “evidence” in a bid to make a case for investigation against Mr Chidambaram for his alleged role in fixing the 2G spectrum price as a finance minister in the UPA-I “jointly” with the then communications minister A. Raja named as key accused by the CBI.
Mr Swamy placed these documents before special judge O.P. Saini after seeking permission from the Supreme Court.
Apart from the finance ministry’s March 2011 note, the other documents submitted to judge Saini were letters and notes exchanged at the highest level between July 2005 — when the process for sale of 2G spectrum was set in motion — and November 2008. Of these, 12 communications were from the PMO to the finance ministry, seven letters and notes by department of economic affairs to the PMO and two endorsement notes of the PMO.
Besides, 10 letters exchanged between cabinet secretary, finance secretary and telecom secretary on the question of referring the 2G spectrum price issue to Group of Ministers, headed by Union minister Pranab Mukherjee, were also placed on record. On the GoM issue, the cabinet secretary sent three letters to the finance secretary and the same number of letters were written back by the FC.
Mr Swamy also had submitted two letters of Mr Raja to the PM opposing referring the issue to the GoM. The documents also included a letter of telecom secretary to the finance ministry explaining the reasons for not referring the spectrum price issue to the GoM.
Mr Swamy had argued that these documents revealed that the cabinet secretariat had been consistently asking the finance ministry to refer the spectrum issue to the GoM and it was also equally supported by DEA till its latest communication of June 6, 2007. He had said that “most crucial” of these documents was the “minutes” of the meetings between Mr Chidambaram and Mr Raja in January 2008 for fixing of 2G spectrum price at `1650 crores.
These meeting were held between January 25 and 28 to discuss the price after Raja in a hurriedly called meeting with corporates on January 10, 2008 had issued “letters of intent (LOIs)” for 122 licences to the 11 companies without an approval of the price by the finance ministry, which was mandatory as per the Trai recommendations.
All the licences were cancelled by the apex court on Thursday.