The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its order on a plea seeking probe into Union home minister P Chidambaram?s role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam when he was the finance minister. With this, it also reserved its verdict on setting up of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to oversee the CBI?s investigations into the scam.

A bench comprising justices G S Singhvi and AK Ganguly completed the hearings on the applications filed by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), an NGO, and Janata Party president Subramanium Swamy. Both CBI and the Centre said that no case had been made out against Chidambaram as he was not in direct communication with Raja in determining the spectrum prices. ?The records show that there was no meeting between Raja and Chidambaram throughout this period and before January 10, 2008 and that all the discussion papers were seen and routed through the finance secretary,? senior counsel PP Rao, appearing for the Centre, told the court.

Swamy told the court that the role of the then finance minister Chidambaram in the 2G scam should be investigated by the CBI as he was all through apprised of former Telecom Minister A Raja actions.

Stating that the CBI and the government focused their argument on just saving Chidambaram, he said he had documents to prove that Chidambaram knew what Raja was doing much before the allotment of licences. Besides, the home minister overruled all his officers, he added.

According to Swamy, Swan and Unitech Wireless were allowed to offload their shares to Etisalat and Telenor, respectively, even before rollout and at a much higher price than what they paid to the government for the licences. This establishes pecuniary gain, a required ingredient under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Countering the CBI submission that the first offence was committed on January 10, 2008 when the LOIs were issued and Chidambaram entered the picture only on or after January 15, 2008, and thus was not a party in the commission of the offence, Swamy said documents submitted to the trial court showed that Chidambaram was aware of what Raja had planned to do.

?Chidambaram was not only acquainted with the facts, but prima facie he was active jointly with Raja in the commission of the offences,? he said, adding that the home minister had been apprised by officials as early as on December 17, 2007 that the 2003 Cabinet decision needed clarification on whether it was justified in fixing the entry fee at the 2001 level.

CBI counsel KK Venugopal told the apex court that once the CBI had completed the probe and the special trial court was holding hearing on the framing of charges, the apex court could not direct the investigating agency to undertake a fresh probe in the matter.

The CBI also opposed the setting up of a SIT saying that if such demands were accepted, then it would amount to ?throwing a cloud? on the CBI probe.

CBI senior counsel KK Venugopal told the court that it could not set up a SIT as chargesheets in the 2G case had already been filed.

CBI ignored Swan-RTL link: Bhushan

Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) counsel Prashant Bhushan told the Supreme Court on Monday that the CBI, which is investigation the 2G spectrum scam, had ignored an important fact that Swan Telecom was a ?benami? outfit of Reliance Telecom (RTL).

Bhushan, in his concluding arguments in his application seeking setting up of a special investigation team (SIT) to supervise CBI investigations into the 2G spectrum scam, said this was clear from the fact that it did not apply for a pan-India GSM licence but applied for licences in only those 13 circles in which Reliance Communication did not have GSM licences.