Govt, Cong play for time as BJP seeks Chidambaram's head
“Let us go through the judgment” was the stock response of government managers after the Supreme Court decided to not just declare illegal 122 licences given to telecom operators illegal but also told the trial court to decide of home minister P Chidambaram needed to be prosecuted for culpability on the issue.
The ruling UPA coalition head, Sonia Gandhi, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were both present at the sixth anniversary of the launching of the government’s employment guarantees scheme but neither referred to the SC order. Telecom minister Kapil Sibal met the PM shortly after lunchtime to brief him and later addressed a press conference. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said the government would need to study the order.
The Congress party’s spokesman, Rashid Alvi, said: “We have respect for the judgement of the Supreme Court. They have not passed any remarks against P Chidambaram and as far as telecom licenses are concerned, we have not gone through the judgement so far.”
As expected, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) described the judgement as the “biggest slap on the face of the Union government”. It asked the Prime Minister to accept responsibility and decided to raise the issue in the coming session of Parliament.
“We have been demanding that home minister P Chidambaram resign and we maintain that stand. The Supreme Court decision now suggests that the entire process adopted at that time was wrong. No one minister could be made responsible for this and some ministers were involved. The Prime Minister should identify those responsible, sack them from his cabinet, including P Chidambaram, and allow investigations to start against him,” said Venkaiah Naidu, senior party leader.
“Ministers in the government are blaming the policies made by the NDA government for the scam but they are not ready to acknowledge that the market situation was different, as companies were not ready to come forward at that time,” said Naresh Gujral, senior leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal.
The leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, told reporters in Lucknow that the court had smashed the theory of zero loss to the exchequer in the licence allotment. He alleged Chidambaram, then the finance minister, had consented to the allocation and all those involved in issuing licenses were answerable. “Chidambaram himself must consider his continuance as home minister untenable,” he said.