 "Not a setback, law officers were not serious: Swamy on 2G verdict")
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who unearthed the 2G spectrum case, on Thursday, snubbed the verdict in the multi-crore scam while saying that the government needs loyal officers, not sycophants.
All accused in the 2G spectrum allocation scam cases - including former telecom minister A Raja and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Kanimozhi - were, earlier in the day, acquitted by a Special CBI court.
Speaking to media, the BJP leader also slammed former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi for welcoming the verdict and said such people should not be made law officers.
"Mukul Rohatgi has welcomed this judgement. When he was appointed Attorney General, I had written to the Prime Minister opposing his appointment, as Rohatgi was an advocate of many of the accused companies, including Unitech. These people should not be made law officer because a wrong signal will go that we are not serious about corruption," he said.
BJP leader said that today's judgment was bad and that it has to be appealed to the High Court.
"The corruption agenda has been derailed, but it can be put back on track again. We just need some honest and straightforward law officers and good lawyers, not those who do 'chamchagiri' to the ministers. We need somebody who has got stature and we need to put them together to have a team and within three months we can reverse whatever has happened," Swamy said.
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He further called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a lesson from this and "set up war council for fighting corruption."
"The Judge says earlier there was a lot of enthusiasm, but later it became worse and worse. Judge also said counsels were lackadaisical. This is a big condemnation of the government controlling of the case. This is not a setback at all. It is an aberration as the law officers were not serious on fighting against corruption... We must now fight corruption on a war footing," he said.
He further said that a special team should be set up, which would set aside this judgment.
The verdict was announced nearly seven years after the first arrest was made by the CBI in 2011.
The alleged scam relates to the granting of 2G spectrum licence allocations in 2007-08, which caused, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the public exchequer.
It was among the major corruption scandals that came to light during the second term of the UPA government headed by former prime minister Manmohan Singh.