On Tuesday, the supreme court criticised the central bureau of investigation for keeping “it in the dark about sharing the probe report with government”. The reference was to the March 12 hearing when additional solicitor general Harin Raval, appearing for CBI, told the court that the probe report in the coal block allocation scam had not been shared with any member of the government and it had only been shared with the apex court after being vetted by the CBI director.

Doubting the claim, the apex court took an unprecedented measure and asked CBI director Ranjit Sinha to assure it that the status report was indeed not shared with the government. Sinha on April 26 contradicted Raval and said the report was indeed shared with law minister Ashwani Kumar and others.

The apex court on 30 termed it a “very disturbing feature” – being kept in dark. Actually, it is much more than keeping the apex court in dark: it is plainly lying before the top judicial authority in the country. That is the apogee of UPA’s crimes, misdemeanours and white lies before the top court.

What the Manmohan Singh government is up to in order to contain the aftermath of its plethora of corruption scandals is becoming a bigger scandal with far higher moral costs.

And who is responsible for this recklessness? There are many heads that should roll, but the first among equals should be attorney general GE Vahanvati.

According to news reports, additional solicitor general Raval — the man who “kept the supreme court in dark”— on Monday wrote a letter to Vahanvati, with a CC to Ashwani Kumar, accusing the top law officer of the government of making him a scapegoat, apart from trying to tinker with the CBI probe report.

According to reports not contradicted by authorities yet, Raval’s letter provides details of a meeting last month in which Ashwani Kumar asked for changes to be made to the CBI report, which was presented to the supreme court later. Vahanvati apparently was present there to give legal advice.

It is Vahanvati’s legal advice that has repeatedly landed the government in soup. The questionable parts of the coal block allocation too had profited from the same law officer’s advice. And, of course, disgraced former telecom minister A Raja’s tinkering in the 2G spectrum allocation policy too were okayed by the same officer — though he argued for a different interpretation when he had to defend himself before the Delhi high court. This was when Raja famously shouted out that he did everything on Vahanvati’s advice but now he was in jail and the officer was out. Later, Raja told the joint parliamentary committee (JPC) in a letter that Vahanvati was telling a “series of untruths” about him.

This is not to absolve the rest of UPA dramatis personae from their individual roles in various scams, but many of them had taken cover under the legal advice happily given out by one man, and if his advice usually ended up benefitting certain corporate group (as hinted in various media reports) at the expense of the exchequer, he must be sacked. He must be sacked before he takes UPA to new moral lows.