After six years, around 30 hearings, Delhi HC accepts CBI appeal in 2G scam acquittal
At last after six years and around 30 hearings, the Delhi High Court on Friday admitted the appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against the acquittal of A Raja, K Kanimozhi, and 15 other high-profile politicians, businessmen, and bureaucrats in the 2G spectrum allocation cases. CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed an appeal in March 2018 against the controversial bad judgment of trial judge OP Saini in December 2017.
Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma, who has been handling the case for the past one year allowed CBI’s “leave to appeal” against the trial court order acquitting 17 accused in the 2G case. For the past six years, nine judges handled the 2G Scam appeal filed by CBI and ED and the process was going at a snail’s pace. Leave to appeal is a formal permission granted by a court to a party to challenge a decision before a higher court.
“This court after going through the material on record, the impugned judgment and the submissions made is of the opinion that a prima facie case has been made out which requires deeper examination of the entire evidence,” Justice Sharma said. He added that there is an arguable case to convert the leave to appeal to a regular appeal. After six years and more than 130 listings, the order on the plea was finally reserved on March 14, 2024.
As per the CBI’s charges, Raja, who was Union Telecom Minister during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, caused huge losses to the state exchequer by undercharging telecom firms for frequency licenses. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India had estimated the total loss to be Rs.1.76 lakh crores.
After the 2G Scam, a huge uproar happened against corruption and the Supreme Court cancelled all telecom licenses allotted by A Raja illegally and ordered the auction of all natural resources. Raja sold out 122 licenses for a meager amount of just Rs.9200 crore. The petitions seeking detailed probe on 2G Scam in Supreme Court were filed by Subramanian Swamy and Prashant Bhushan. After the auction started from mid-2010, till 2022, the telecom licenses auction earned more than Rs.6.5 lakh crore to the Government exchequer. Auction also began in the Coal Sector, which enabled transparency and huge revenues.
The other accused in the case include former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja’s erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Managing DirectorSanjay Chandra, and three top executives of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group – Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair. Essar Group promoters Ravi Kant Ruia, Anshuman Ruia, IP Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan. All were acquitted by trial Judge OP Saini in a controversial bad Judgment.
The CBI argued that the trial court judgment suffers from inconsistencies and that there is no reason why the High Court should not hear the appeal. Senior Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Sanjay Jain argued the case for CBI before the High Court.
Here are all the details about the 2G scam[1].
Reference:
[1] Violations, Timeline in 2G Spectrum Scam – Mar 26, 2023, J Gopikrishnan
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what happened to national herald case….
Who is responsible for this six month delay? This is how everyone has connived in destroying the judicial system, everyone is part of this game and that is why they want Modi out. The fear is if he comes back in 2024, things are feared to become very difficult for all pillars.
Medical skeletons !!