Hearing on Swamy's plea against Raja deferred to May 26

A Delhi court today deferred till May 26 the hearing on a plea by Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy who had levelled some fresh allegations against former Telecom Minister A Raja, the key accused in the 2G spectrum allocation case.

Special CBI Judge O P Saini, who had dismissed last month Swamy's plea to make Home Minister P Chidambaram a co-accused in the case, had said the hearing on Swamy's compliant, which also had some additional allegations against Raja would resume from today.

The court adjourned the hearing for May 26 after Swamy's counsel Tarun Goomber said the matter for making Chidambaram a co-accused in the case was pending before the Supreme Court.

"The matter is pending in the Supreme Court and we are hoping that order would come soon. Please adjourn the matter for mid-May," Goomber said about the appeal filed by Swamy against the special judge's February 4 order which had dismissed his plea against Chidambaram.

The judge also condoned his abscence from the court today on his plea for exemption from personal appearance for the day as he was in Chennai.

The court had earlier dismissed Swamy's plea to make Chidambaram an accused in the 2G case saying he did not indulge in any criminal conspiracy or derived any pecuniary advantage in the decisions taken with Raja.

Giving a clean chit to Chidambaram, who was the finance minister during the controversial allocation of 2G spectrum in 2008, the court had said he was party to only two decisions -- keeping spectrum prices at 2001 level and dilution of equity by two companies and they "are not per se criminal" offence.

The court had said there was no evidence on record to suggest that there was an agreement between Chidambaram and Raja to subvert telecom policy and obtain pecuniary advantage for himself or for any other person.