SC slams government for crawling Radia tapes probe

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sharply criticised the government for its apparent hiatus in investigating the controversial Niira Radia tapes, saying the "long delay has made the matter infructuous".

The single-judge bench of Justice G S Singhvi said, "What is surprising is that these tapes were available for a long time to the superior officers. These are serious issues. We want to know whether these were shared with superior officers. If they were, action would have been taken. The long delay has made the matter infructuous."

The scandal erupted after telephone tapes of Raadia, acquainted with disgraced former telecom minister A Raja, were leaked, leading to a further twist in the 2G telecom scandal. The taps were conducted by the income-tax department, but they uncovered things other than tax evasion.

The court is hearing petitions filed by industrialist Ratan Tata and a non-government organisation.

While Tata has argued that a private conversation should not be placed in the public domain, the NGO has sought that all conversations except those purely personal in nature be made public to bring out the role corporate lobbies play in governance and decision-making.

The court, however, did not press the issue after additional solicitor general P P Malhotra said he was not prepared with the case. The court gave the government until Wednesday to give its response.

The court also sought to know the opinion of the Central Bureau of Investigation on the transcripts of the 5,800 audio tapes, which contain conversations between corporate lobbyist Radia and some ministers and journalists.

The CBI counsel, K K Venugopal, said the conversations raised serious issues of government servants privy to important public information sharing it with private groups.