No wrongdoing in 2G case, govt to court

NEW DELHI, INDIA: There has been no wrongdoing in the allocation of second generation (2G) spectrum, the government told the Supreme Court Thursday.

Attorney General G. Vahanvati told judges G.S. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly that everything in the allocation of 2G licences was in conformity with the then national telecom policy.

Vahanvati said that in the grant of the licences, revenue was not a consideration and the government's goal was to increase teledensity.

He said this in reply to a petition by Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy seeking the cancellation of 2G licences on grounds that these were granted arbitrarily and in breach of the first-cum-first served policy.

Swamy also said that telecom companies had failed to comply with their contractual responsibility.

Investigation into the corruption allegations linked to the spectrum allocation led to the resignation and later arrest of A. Raja, who was the communications minister.

Meanwhile, in the latest blow to the Manmohan Singh government, Central Vigilance Commissioner P.J. Thomas quit Thursday after the Supreme Court struck down his appointment for his alleged involvement in a corruption scandal and raised the issue of "institutional integrity".

Six months after the Kerala bureaucrat was named as head of the country's anti-corruption watchdog, the Supreme Court said the appointment by a high-powered panel, consisting of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and opposition leader Sushma Swaraj, did not exist in law.

Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had alleged that the appointment of former telecom secretary P.J. Thomas as the new Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) appeared to be "a deliberate attempt to cover up the 2G spectrum scandal".