Former communications minister, Arun Shourie, today said the Supreme Court order to widen the scope of 2G spectrum investigations from 2001 would establish how “honest decisions were taken by honest people”.
Shourie, who held the telecom portfolio between January 2003 and May 2004 during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) rule, said he was not sure what made the apex court widen the scope of probe from 2001. However, the SC order “is an opportunity for all of us to demonstrate that the Department of Telecommunications has not been manned by Rajas alone,” he said.
Many of the issues relating to the telecom policy during the NDA regime had already been examined and settled by judgments of the Supreme Court and rulings of the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, he said.
“My only plea is that the new order should not become an excuse for delaying the prosecution of Raja on the evidence that is well in hand of CBI,” he added. Set to monitor the probe into 2G spectrum scam, the Supreme Court widened the investigation in the case by bringing in its ambit the telecom policy of both NDA and UPA regimes from 2001 to 2008. Before Shourie, the late Pramod Mahajan was the communications minister from 2001.
