Rule of law triumphs

Supreme Court on 2G scam

Henceforth, no govt can overlook the concept of ‘trusteeship’ while  dealing with the country’s natural resources.

Ever since the 2G Spectrum scam broke out in 2010 and threatened to consume the UPA government, the dirty tricks department of the Congress party had worked on a strategy to find a fall guy and distance itself from his nefarious activities which resulted in Independent India’s biggest ever scam of over Rs 1.76 lakh crore. By following a policy of “give a dog a bad name and hang him,” and trying to make former telecom minister A Raja solely responsible for all that went wrong, the clever lawyers in the government believed that the moral brigade led by the “incorruptible” Dr Manmohan Singh could escape responsibility.

 But, the Supreme Court’s historic judgment on the 2G scam has comprehensively exposed the entire government’s role in the “illegal and arbitrary exercise of power” in the allotment of spectrum for the benefit of a few companies to make windfall profits.

Cancelling all the 122 licences granted in a “capricious manner,” by the UPA government, the court observed that “natural resources are vested with the government as a matter of trust in the name of the people of India, and it is the solemn duty of the state to protect the national interest, and the natural resources must always be used in the interests of the country and not private interests.”

This judgment, which quashes a policy decision  -- which was earlier presumed to be the government’s prerogative -- will have wider ramifications beyond the instant case, as no future government can overlook the concept of ‘trusteeship’ while dealing with the country’s natural resources.

Admittedly, though there is no direct indictment of the prime minister or then finance minister P Chidambaram as yet, the fact that Manmohan Singh continued to defend Raja till the very end and even after the scam broke out, took absolutely no action to cancel the deals struck by Raja, clearly indicates that Raja was not acting alone and there must have been several other beneficiaries of the scam who were presumably too big to be touched. The question is, will their names come out in the open at least now?

The government’s immediate priority appears to be to protect Chidambaram, not because it loves him, having been fondly described as one of its ‘pillars’, but because if Chidambaram goes, there is no knowing who else the raging fire will engulf. If the cornered Raja and other telecom officials now facing trial were to spill the beans, can the more powerful ‘silent beneficiaries’ of the whole scandal go unscathed?

A pathetic-sounding telecom minister, Kapil Sibal, who tried to discredit the Comptroller and Auditor General of India for its scathing report and did his best to propagate the theory of “zero loss” to the exchequer, is now attempting to shift the blame on the previous NDA government.

First-come-first-served policy

According to him, the first-come-first-served policy was first adopted by the NDA government led by A B Vajpayee in 2001 and the UPA government merely followed the same procedure. He conveniently forgets that the telecom sector was in its infancy then with hardly a handful of players and in 2007, when the UPA government wanted to follow the same first-come-first-served policy, it was consistently and vehemently opposed by the finance and law ministries — several times in writing. Besides, Sibal failed to explain why, after receiving many complaints of arbitrariness, the prime minister himself wrote to A Raja on November 2, 2007, that “keeping in view inadequacy of spectrum, transparency and fairness should be maintained in the allocation.”

It is, of course, part of history that a cocky Raja, maintained that he had “always kept the prime minister informed” and chose to disdainfully ignore the prime minister’s advice. Unable to tame Raja, who had powerful backers, Manmohan Singh tried to distance himself from the controversy, and once ruefully blamed the scam on ‘coalition politics.’

The Supreme Court has also noted the contribution of two public-spirited lawyers Subramaniam Swamy and Prashant Bhushan who have relentlessly pursued the case and brought out many details which were not in public domain. Swamy’s complaint that Raja was in constant touch with Chidambaram while finalising the allocation and pricing of spectrum and that Chidambaram’s role should also be investigated by the CBI, will come up before the special CBI judge O P Saini on Saturday and the UPA government is understandably nervous. If the court permits a CBI inquiry into Chidambaram’s role, the home minister will be left with no option but to quit.

The Supreme Court judgment in 2G case is also significant for many other milestones that have been set. Commenting on the first-come-first-served policy, the court said, “In matters involving award of contracts or grant of licence or permission to use public property, the invocation of the principle has inherently dangerous implications....When it comes to alienation of scarce natural resources, the state must always adopt a method of auction by giving wide publicity so that all eligible persons may participate in the process.”

 Rejecting the Centre’s stand that policy decisions could not be a matter of judicial review, the bench held that, “when matters like these are brought...it becomes the duty of the court to exercise its power in the larger public interest and ensure that institutional integrity is not compromised by those in whom the people have reposed trust...”

Without doubt, this judgment will be an important landmark for institutionalising transparency and accountability in public life.