The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its opinion on the presidential reference, seeking its view on the February 2 judgment in the 2G case that found that the auction was best-suited route for allocating natural resources and flawed the policy of first-come-first-serve adopted by the government in 2008.
While concluding it’s hearing on the presidential reference, a five-judge constitution bench asked Attorney General GE Vahanvati to give the Centre’s exact position by Wednesday on the recommendations of the Ashok Chawla committee that suggested auctions of natural resources such as minerals, coal, spectrum, land, natural gas & petroleum.
Janta Party chief Subramanium Swamy informed the apex court that the government had told Parliament on August 9 that the committee had made 81 recommendations out of which 69 have been accepted by the government based on the recommendations of the GoM on Corruption headed by Pranab Mukherjee. One has been rejected and 11 are under consideration.
Swamy also gave a press release from the PM’s office stating that ministries have been directed to implement the recommendations of the committee.
He also said that the government should have disclosed all these in the reference itself.
During the hearing, the bench said it wanted to know whether in principle the Centre has taken any policy decision on the acceptance of the Chawla Committee recommendations. Vahanvati responded that ?the report is still under consideration.?
While the government had on April 12 moved the reference, raising eight questions? including investments made by foreign investors under multi and bilateral agreements ? the apex court had decided to look only into four questions
