The Congress and the Government had a sigh of relief on Tuesday with the Supreme Court holding that the Prime Minister was not obliged to sanction any permission to Dr Subramanian Swamy for prosecuting former Telecom Minister A Raja, who has since resigned, in the 2G spectrum scam.

That also puts the embarrassment off Dr Manmohan Singh's chest as he was seen as protecting Raja in the notice the Court slapped on the government last week to file an affidavit on his inaction in sanctioning the prosecution.
 
Dr Swamy had moved the Apex Court to get him the PM's sanction to prosecute Raja, citing the inordinate delay in response to applications filed one after another to get the nod for taking the telecom minister to court.

The Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly that had only on Monday chided the media for misreporting notice to the PM agreed with Attorney General Ghulam E Vahanvati's submission that Dr Swamy's petition asking the PM for sanction was "misconceived and premature" in law.

INFRUCTUOUS: The petition became infructuous after Dr Swamy told the Court that he neither blames the PM for alleged inaction nor does he require sanction as it amounted to dropping his main prayer to issue directions to Dr Manmohan Singh to grant sanction for prosecution of Raja.

The AG, the highest legal officer pressed in the case for the first time to appear on behalf of the PMO after some flip-flops of Solicitor General Subramanium, took the stand that "there is no question of considering a sanction to prosecute when no criminal complaint was filed at all."

Asserting the settled law that there is no question of sanction merely on the institution of a compliant, he argued that "till date, the petitioner has not even filed a complaint in the competent court and in such circumstances, the question of sanction cannot and does not arise."

COURT COGNIZANCE: Vahanvati contended that the sanction is necessary only after a court takes cognizance of the complaint and issues summons to the accused. Even the court ordering further investigation under section 156 (3) CrPC is not enough.

The AG's contention was challenged by senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, counsel for Centre for PIL whose petition is also pending before the Bench for the Supreme Court monitoring the CBI probe into the 2G spectrum allocation irregularities.

He said where was the need to go to the administrative authority for sanction after the court has already applied its mind by taking cognizance.

Dr Swamy also countered the AG, asserting that he was free to seek sanction even without filing a complaint on the basis of the material placed by him before the Prime Minister.

FILING CASE: He later told reporters that he would file a criminal suit against Raja in the first week of December in a Delhi court as the sanction is not necessary after his resignation.

He also gave a clean chit to the Prime Minister whom he had earlier accused of alleged inaction on his applications to grant sanction to prosecute Raja. He told the Court that there was no mala fide on the part of the Prime Minister as he was rather misled by the Law Ministry and bureaucrats.

On the point of sanction, Dr Swamy told the apex court that he no longer required any sanction for prosecuting Raja under the anti-corruption law as he is no longer the Telecom Minister.

He, however, pleaded with the Supreme Court to lay down guidelines on the procedure to be adopted for grant of sanction against public servants involved in corruption.