NEW DELHI: Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy on Friday told the apex court that P Chidambaram was very much aware that the 2G spectrum allocation to telecom companies was done at a much lesser price than what it was worth. Chidambaram was the union finance minister then.
Making his submissions before a Bench comprising Justice G S Singhvi and Justice K S Radhakrishnan, Swamy said the first allegation against Chidambaram was regarding the pricing, while the second was about permitting the parties that got the licences to sell them to foreign companies.
This, when the CBI had contended that then union telecom minister A Raja was primarily responsible for the scam. Swamy and counsel for the Centre for Public Interest Litigation Prashant Bhushan told the Bench that the Centre got just Rs 9,600 crore through spectrum allocation when it would have actually fetched Rs 50,000 crore. They also said that Chidambaram actually had a second opportunity to prevent the scam when he was apprised of the low spectrum pricing through letters by Shyamala Shukla, one of the secretaries in the Union Finance Ministry, and also Indu Khuller. A position paper was prepared and discussed. So, no one could say that people were not aware. The then finance minister could not say that he was in the dark, Swamy averred.