P Chidambaram

New Delhi, Oct. 10: The government today upped the ante in the 2G case, telling the Supreme Court that the unintended consequences of its open court hearings were “destabilising the system”. It suggested the court to conduct any further hearings on the case behind closed doors.

“The media coverage, applications (filed by petitioners) based on incomplete facts, are not in anyone’s interest,” senior lawyer P.P. Rao said, adding that these were “destabilising the system without any justification”.

This is the first time that the government has raised the bogey of the destabilising impact of the open court monitoring of the progress in the CBI’s pace of investigations into the case that has so far claimed the scalp of two members of the Manmohan Singh cabinet and is now threatening to overwhelm the government.

A. Raja, now the chief accused in the CBI chargesheet filed in the case, had to resign after the apex court started monitoring the case. Dayanidhi Maran was textiles minister in the UPA-II government with cabinet rank when he had to step down.

Now the heat is on home minister P. Chidamabaram, with Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy urging the court to direct the CBI to probe his role in the 2008 allotment of 2G spectrum at 2001 prices.

Swamy claimed that Chidambaram (when he was finance minister) was privy to all actions of Raja and hence should be made a co-accused in the case. Though officially, he has only so far said the CBI should probe Chidambaram’s role in the entire episode.

Allotment of 2G spectrum in 2008 at 2001 prices has allegedly caused a loss of Rs 70,000 crore to the exchequer.

Opening the arguments today, the CBI argued that now that the chargesheets had been filed, the Supreme Court cannot direct it to probe the case in any way. Any further investigations can only be directed by the trial court, he said, urging the court to reject Swamy’s plea. “No case was made out for any further investigation,” he said, hours after the agency filed an FIR against Maran and raided his offices.

He also objected to any other monitoring team to sit on judgement over the manner in which the CBI was probing the case. Resuming soon after, Rao claimed that it was the finance ministry’s consistent stand that spectrum should be auctioned. “Records show no meeting between Raja and Maran,” he said.

Rao questioned the scope of court monitoring. “Investigation can’t be held in public. Investigation needs to be conducted confidentially, away from the glare of the media and the public, including the petitioners, as otherwise public interest would suffer and the object of a thorough investigation frustrated,” he said. He dismissed Swamy and Centre for Public Interest Litigation lawyer Prashant Bhushan’s demand for a CBI probe and monitoring by former Supreme Court judges respectively as “destabilising”. “The applications (of Swamy and Bhushan) were based on assumptions, conjectures and wishful inferences,” his written submissions handed over to the court said.

“Open court hearings of such applications and the media coverage without having access to the actual contents of progress reports (submitted by CBI) is becoming counter-productive and is retarding the pace of investigation and defeating the object of investigation. It would be in public interest to monitor further investigation in respect of offences not yet taken cognisance of in chambers and to allow public servants concerned to discharge their duties unaffected by undue speculation in the media based on incomplete facts.”

The suggestion that any further hearings in the case be held in-camera, prompted the two judges, G.S. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly, to point out that the submissions were being made belatedly, after 12 to 14 hearings. “Can we prevent anyone from filing applications? Can we tell the media not to write?” the bench wondered.