A special bench of the Supreme Court monitoring the 2G case will pronounce on Tuesday its verdict on the crucial question whether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had delayed investigation against former communications minister A. Raja for nearly 16 months and if so whether he had “violated” any law.
A special bench of Justices G. S. Singhvi and A. K. Ganguly has fixed the pronouncement for Tuesday as the latter is retiring on February 2 and they are not scheduled to sit together any more to hear the 2G case.
The bench, which had reserved its judgements on some other crucial questions in the 2G scam case, is expected only to assemble for pronouncing the other verdicts apart from the one fixed for Tuesday on a petition of Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy.
The verdict was reserved by the bench on November 24, 2010 after heated arguments for several days while the court had put certain “uncomfortable” questions to the top law officers of the Centre as what the PM had done for nearly 16 months on Swamy’s complaint against Raja and his plea for granting “sanction” for his prosecution.
While Swamy had alleged that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had virtually “sat over” the matter for nearly 16 months despite the CBI registering a case against some “unknown” persons, the government in a subsequent affidavit had spelt out details as how the PM had dealt with Swamy’s letters.
In this regard the bench had examined the March 19, 2010 letter of PM written to Swamy in response of his petition of November 29, 2008 for sanction to prosecute Raja and CBI’s records about registering of the FIR in 2G case on October 21, 2009.
Since there was a long gap of nearly 16 months to respond to Swamy’s letter by the PM, the bench had raised the questions on such a long “silence” on the part of the PM as the judges said “it was troubling us”.
“The PM could have clearly stated that there is no sufficient material for him to make up his mind but he is saying that it (demand for sanction) has not matured. It was open for the sanctioning authority in this case to refer the complaint to AG (Attorney General). We are not advising it but it is troubling us,” the bench had observed.
Both government and Swamy were allowed to place on record all related documents, including the letters exchanged between the Janata Party leader and the PMO before reserving its verdict.
