JOIN USThe supreme court’s decision to take upon itself the responsibility to monitor the Central Bureau of Investigation’s probe into the 2G spectrum scam may not put an end to the opposition parties’ campaign for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe. They have made that clear. The CBI probe, which will cover the grant of licences from 2001 when the NDA government was in power, will also cover the same ground as the recently appointed Shivraj Patil committee. The Enforcement Directorate will also be part of the probe. The court’s decision to directly supervise the investigation is right because it cannot, for different reasons, allow the government or the CVC to monitor the case. It is also not confident of allowing the CBI to conduct the probe on its own. The court has been very unhappy with the record of the CBI in investigating the case. It had passed serious strictures also about its conduct of the case in the past.
It has told the CBI to file a progress report on the investigations in February. Considering the complexity of the case and its wide scope, the investigation will take a long a time. The progress report in February is unlikely to satisfy the opposition parties which have said that they would take their demand for a JPC probe into the next parliament session too. The Patil committee’s report also should be available by then. But there are serious doubts about the relevance of this committee’s investigation when the CBI also has much the same brief.
The CBI has been told by the court to go ahead with the investigation without fear of interference from any quarters. There may be doubts whether this is possible in the environment in which the CBI is working. It should be noted that the court has set up no special investigating team, as in the case of investigation into the Gujarat riots. Even there, there are complaints about the SIT. It is likely that there will be criticism of the CBI’s conduct in this case too. Therefore, it is for the agency to bury its dubious record in the investigation of sensitive cases and ensure that all those who acted wrongly and illegally are brought to book, however highly placed they are. The supreme court’s supervision gives credibility to the investigation and the court should see to it that it is conducted properly.