Supreme Court to hear 2G Spectrum case today

NEW DELHI - The Supreme Court will on Monday hear a petition against A. Raja on his alleged involvement in the allocation of 2G Spectrum.

A bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly will hear the petition filed by NGO CPIL, which has alleged that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is dragging its feet in the probe against Raja.

The petition claims that Raja brought about a substantial loss of public revenue by disregarding expert advice within his own government to allocate, and not publicly auction, spectrum licences to certain private companies in 2007 at 2001 prices.

The petition also claims that the spectrum was later sold by these companies at enhanced prices, causing a loss to the national exchequer.

A counter-affidavit filed by the Department of Telecommunications last week retorted that Raja was acting as per national policy and had invited “fresh competition”, which proved beneficial to telecom revenue in the past three years.

Meanwhile, Raja, under sustained pressure from the Opposition, finally submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Talking to reporters here, Raja said: “In order to avoid embarrassment to the Government and maintain peace and harmony in Parliament, he has resigned from his post.”

He, however, said he will prove his innocence and did every thing in accordance with the law.

The 2G spectrum allocations caused an alleged loss of Rs1.76 lakh crore to the Government, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has stated in a damning report.

The report further states that Raja had no apparent logical or valid reasons to ignore the advice of the Law and Finance Ministries while allocating telecom spectrum to several firms in 2007-08.

The report is likely to be tabled in Parliament within ten days. (ANI)