Supreme Court seeks Centre's response to Ratan Tata's plea on Radia tapes

The Supreme Court has issued notices to the home ministry, the CBI and the income-tax department on a petition from Ratan Tata that seeks to prevent the further disclosure of recorded conversations between the industrialist and corporate lobbyist Nira Radia.

Tata’s counsel Harish Salve didn’t seek an injunction against the media for publishing or telecasting the telephonic conversations.
Earlier in the day, solicitor-general Gopal Subramanium handed over the sealed computer hard disk, the tapes and call records to the court. Upon receiving them, the bench of justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly said, “It’s like a Christmas gift.”

While hearing Tata’s petition, the judges asked the parties to respond within 10 days to averments made by the petitioner who sought the protection of right to life guaranteed under Article 21.

Adjourning the hearing in the case till December 13, the judges said that the issues raised by Tata should not become an academic exercise. Magazines Outlook and Open have already published the taped conversations and put them on their websites.

Attorney-general Goolam E Vahanvati accepted the notice.

“We aren’t in a hurry”, the court said and asked Salve about the “private conversations” his client wanted to be kept out of the public domain. Salve said there were private conversations that had nothing to do with the spectrum scam and cannot be made public. He argued that their disclosure would violate Tata’s right to privacy. Salve also said he doesn’t want any injunction against the media.

The petition doesn’t challenge the right of probe agencies to record or create transcipts of conversations. The key idea in the petition is that the conversations should not be made available in a public domain and that conversations not relevant to the scam must be kept out of the media’s reach. According to the CBI, there are 5,800 conversations that run into about 560 hours.

During the inconclusive hearing in the petition filed by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) seeking the setting up of a special investigating team to conduct the probe in the scam under the apex court’s supervision, the judges castigated Raja for showing ‘disrespect’ to the prime minister and ignoring his mandate to defer  the spectrum auction for some days. The judges also passed strictures on Raja for telling the PM that the acceptance of his advice would be ‘arbitrary’. Raja had used terms such as “unfair, discriminatory, capricious and arbitrary” in a letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh. Raja had been berated by the court on Wednesday too.

Taking exception to Raja’s use of language, an anguished bench told his counsel TR Andhyarujina, “Look at the command of his language. When you address a letter to the highest executive, the tenor of the language should be temperate. Here, it is a question of attitude.”

Raja’s counsel sought to calm them down by saying that the minister had never ignored the opinion of the law ministry or the prime minister’s advice. On this, the judges said nothing would have happened if you [Raja] had waited for “two-three days” after receiving the PM’s letter. The judges found it hard to overcome the tenor of Raja’s letter. They said, “Look out at the gloss of the minister.” Raja’s counsel pleaded that he “may be guilty of gloss but not disrespect”. Andhyarujina also said that the former minister had done what was required to be done and there was no question of any disrespect to the PM.

He pleaded that Raja had come into the picture in May 2007 and was continuing the policy implemented by “his predecessors”. The predecessors were Arun Shourie (BJP) and Dayanidhi Maran (DMK). “You (only) walked on the footsteps of your predecessors,” the bench remarked, to which Andhyarujina replied, “Yes, I walked on the footsteps of my predecessors.” The hearing will continue on Thursday.