After 2G verdict, an autopsy of failures

The case throws up more general issues relating to institutional failures, public policy and judicial proceedings

After the Supreme Court’s (SC) decision of February 2012 (cancelling all licences), one would have thought that the judgment in the “2G case” was a foregone conclusion. Not so. The “prosecution failed miserably” in establishing its case.

The political aftermath will reverberate up to 2019. Political victimisation, trumped-up charges, fictional “presumptive losses”, the credibility of the then Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), vindication of the UPA’s public policy stance, and the mischievous role of the “Opposition” (the Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP) will be recurrent themes.

But, politics aside, the case throws up more general issues relating to institutional failures, public