For the UPA-2 government that was so desperate for good news after several court indictments, the dismissal of Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy’s petition seeking prosecution of home minister P. Chidambaram over his alleged complicity with former communications minister A. Raja in the 2G scam came as welcome relief. It also saved the government a lot of embarrassment: had Mr Chidambaram been indicted, there would have been an immediate demand for his resignation, and Parliament’s Budget Session would have been gridlocked. It is important to note the court observed Mr Chidambaram was a party to only two decisions: keeping spectrum prices at 2001 levels; and dilution of equity by the two firms named in the 2G scam — Unitech and Swan. To that extent it agreed with the petitioner. But it also unambiguously spelt out that these two decisions were not criminal acts, and since there was nothing incriminating about Mr Chidambaram’s actions it could not be said he was party to a criminal conspiracy. It was an administrative decision taken in good faith, the court observed, and just because it turned out to be a bad one it did not mean the decision involved criminality.
That was the weakness in Dr Swamy’s petition: as a private individual he could only go on documents he could lay his hands on; and did not have any powers to investigate anyone’s accounts or find money trails. Even the CBI, with all the resources at its command, has been able to locate a measly `200 crores in a scam said to involve over `1 lakh crore. As the court’s 65-page order indicates, Dr Swamy therefore could not demonstrate any criminal conspiracy between Mr Chidambaram, who was then finance minister, and Mr Raja to subvert the telecom policy and obtain pecuniary advantage for himself. Perhaps Dr Swamy, as some top lawyers hinted, instead of asking for the prosecution of the home minister, should have asked the judge to direct the CBI to do conduct further investigations on the matter.
The most disappointed after Saturday’s developments was, of course, the BJP as the court order had taken the wind out of the sails of its anti-Chidambaram campaign. While the party said it would continue its campaign against the home minister, its own moral authority has been seriously eroded after it embedded corrupt UP ministers sacked by the Mayawati government as candidates in the Assembly elections. The BJP’s disappointment is understandable: had the court accepted Dr Swamy’s prayer, the BJP’s next target would have been Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It maintained that the PM was party to the decision to sell 2G spectrum cheap and that he was aware of what Mr Raja was doing, to which he had turned a blind eye.