SC slams govt, CBI over info sharing

Additional Solicitor-General Harin Raval today resigned after his letter to Attorney-General (AG) G E Vahavati, leaked late last night, showed the former might have lied to the Supreme Court on the latter’s instruction.

Earlier, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government reeled from the shock of a Supreme Court assault on it and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for nearly two hours over sharing of information in the coal block allocation scam.

The court observed CBI had suppressed the fact that it had shared information on investigation at the desire of the “political masters”. The judges remarked “our first exercise will be to liberate CBI from political interference”.

Law Minister Ashwani Kumar was unavailable for comment, while PM Manmohan Singh merely said he would not react on the basis of verbal observations and wait for the court’s full order. Privately, some ministers conceded SC’s remarks were devastating for the government’s credibility.

Saying the events had “shaken the entire investigation process”, the judges asked CBI Director Ranjit Sinha to answer half a dozen searching questions, drafted at the start of the hearing. Sinha will file his replies by Monday; the hearing will resume on Wednesday.

Vahanvati only said he had not seen either the draft or final probe report. Uday Lalit, who replaced Raval as CBI’s counsel, also refrained from arguments but received censure with modesty.

Summarising its criticism of CBI’s behaviour, the three-judge Bench, headed by Justice R M Lodha, put several questions before the agency.

The first among those was why CBI’s March 8 status report did not disclose the draft report had been shared with the executive, political or official. It was only on March 12 that CBI disclosed to the court it had been shown the report to the law minister, besides PMO and coal ministry officials.

Outside the court, Sinha said CBI had done nothing wrong. “CBI is under the government’s control. In any case, it was the law minister we showed our report to, not some outsider,” he told a TV channel.

Second, the court sought to know the basis on which Raval made his statement to the court on March 12 that the status report had not been shared with anyone. Raval had said the status report was meant for the court alone. In the new affidavit, dated April 26, CBI had candidly said the draft had been shared with the law minister, an official in the PMO and a joint secretary in the coal ministry.

Third, the agency was asked to clarify if any change had been made in the draft report — if yes, to what extent and at whose instance — and if anyone else (besides the three mentioned) had seen the draft. The court also wanted to know the names of all the officials concerned. It regretted these details were not there in CBI’s latest affidavit.

Fourth, the judges asked CBI to inform them the procedure it followed under its manual or guidelines on sharing status report with respect to the ongoing investigations. Also, the judges called for details of people in the investigating team and their background.

Besides these, the judges orally asked the new CBI counsel to give a “candid and truthful” reply founded on records. They said, if the investigation was influenced by the law minister or others, their interference would make the probe “false and meaningless”. Had somebody been sought to be shielded, they asked.

The court warned, “consequences must follow” if the coal block allocations were not on constitutional principles. The judges added they were not concerned with individual cases but wondered why coal was not extracted from 2006 to 2009 even after licences being granted. The attorney-general was told that the coal ministry, according to CBI, was not sharing information with it. It was playing “hide and seek” by giving incomplete and irrelevant information, they remarked.

On the court’s observations, former solicitor-general, Harish Salve, told Business Standard the indictment of the Supreme Court was so severe that all in the government’s legal food chain should consider resigning — the law minister and the attorney-general downwards.

Top ministers were closeted in meetings to handle the latest bombshell: First Congress President Sonia Gandhi was informed, then a group of ministers, including Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Defence Minister A K Antony, went in to hold an emergency meeting with her and the prime minister. Later Ashwani Kumar joined, too. After the meeting, the PM said: “I have not studied the Supreme Court’s observations. Whatever action is called for will be taken after studying it.”

Adding to the government’s woes, principal Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said it would boycott all government-sponsored meetings called either by Speaker Meira Kumar or Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath. It said it did not think the government was credible any more. This was because Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, according to BJP, was heckled and her speech interrupted by Congress ministers at Sonia Gandhi’s instance.

The Opposition also attacked the Union government on the draft report of Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on 2G and demanded JPC Chairman PC Chacko resign from the post, as he had lost the confidence of the members.

BJP leaders have already spoken to all Opposition parties, including Left, AIADMK and BJD, and have gained support of DMK, which also wants the draft report to be rejected.

The Samajwadi Party, a crucial ally of the government, has also sided with the Opposition for now and said it would not support the draft report if former telecom minister A Raja was not called before JPC.