"....On 21 December 2017, the special court in New Delhi acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum case including prime accused A Raja and Kanimozhi.[12] This verdict was based on the fact that CBI could not find any evidence against the accused in those 7 years. As per the judgement, "Some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels..."
I am not sure what to make of this, more so considering that this happened when the opposing party, BJP, was in power. - Was there no scam at all? Was there a scam but they just accused the wrong people? Is the judiciary and/or CBI complicit? And, if so is BJP complicit too, because ideally they should have every incentive to ensure the rule of law is enforced to the fullest degree considering that the accused were from the opposition Congress party?
Mihir Sharma’s book Restart (2014) has a good chapter on this. The answer it seems was, no.
It’s not in the national interest to charge maximal prices for natural resources, and this is followed by many countries even today — China and the US included — and such rights are given away for a nominal or modest price, and always with a view to ensuring wide market participation.
Even European spectrum auctions have a clear aim of ensuring a sustainable market of 4 or more effective competitors.
This has been historic practice in India also. For instance, the British colonial government gave India’s other big industrial group — the Tatas — rights to coal and iron mining in the late 1800s for free to set up India’s first steel plant. Even the BJP’s own Vajpayee government did this.
The CAG’s “notional loss theory”, he argues, is rubbish. And looking at the events in India’s once vibrant Mobile Telecom industry, which has has now been reduced to an effective duopoly, one can argue Sharma was right.
"....On 21 December 2017, the special court in New Delhi acquitted all accused in the 2G spectrum case including prime accused A Raja and Kanimozhi.[12] This verdict was based on the fact that CBI could not find any evidence against the accused in those 7 years. As per the judgement, "Some people created a scam by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels..."
I am not sure what to make of this, more so considering that this happened when the opposing party, BJP, was in power. - Was there no scam at all? Was there a scam but they just accused the wrong people? Is the judiciary and/or CBI complicit? And, if so is BJP complicit too, because ideally they should have every incentive to ensure the rule of law is enforced to the fullest degree considering that the accused were from the opposition Congress party?