The Tatas have sought in-camera hearings of the 2G scam.

Tatas seek in-camera hearing in spectrum case
The Tatas have sought in-camera hearings of the 2G scam. The request was made by the Tata counsel Harish Salve on Tuesday who asked the Supreme Court for hearings away from the public and media after a petitioner accused the Tata group of wrong-doings.
“The court may consider holding in-camera proceedings as petitioner's counsel Prashant Bhushan is making allegations based on some source information which gets highlighted in the media,” Salve said while placing his request before a Bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly.
“What the CBI finds we will only come to know when the chargesheet is filed. But, whatever Bhushan has alleged today will find a distorted narration in the newspapers tomorrow. We are a large corporate and we have our reputation to guard,” he said, while requesting Bhushan to exercise restraint while making the allegations.
In turn, the court said the media should be responsible while reporting the proceedings but observed that there was public interest in the case. It said it would consider Salve's request later.
Earlier, Prashant Bhushan alleged that Tata Realty had played a key role in financing several players through Unitech to get spectrum. He said, “As per Justice Shivraj Patil report, Tatas were not entitled to get spectrum as they had applied for it only on October 22, 2007 and stood at the end of the queue under the first come first served principle.”
He added: “However, they were allotted spectrum under the dual technology escape route and there was a quid pro quo when they gave a large chunk of land to A Raja's party DMK. This has come to light in the Radia tapes.”
The Bench said: “After the last hearing, we prime facie do not find any fault in the line of investigation. We can assure you that they have said, with regard to larger public interst and taking into account your (Bhushan's) apprehension, they have kept something for future.”
“We know CBI is investigating all aspects. If there is deviation we will examine later. For the court, public interest is upper-most,” said Justices Singhvi and Ganguly.
Bhushan drew court’s attention to the alleged armtwisting of telecom firm S-Tel by then minister A Raja for moving the Delhi HC against the arbitrary change of firstcome, first-serve policy.
He said the government, which now claimed that there would be problem in cancelling the spectrum licences, had not taken a day to cancel STel's licences citing security reason and forcing it to withdraw its appeal from the Supreme Court. “If that was so, why is it a problem now to cancel the irregularly allotted licences,” he asked.
“Fortunately, Subramanian Swamy intervened and the Supreme Court kept intact the finding of the HC that rules of the game were changed after the play had begun,” Bhushan said. Immediately after S Tel withdrew the petition, the government revived its licences in few circles, he added.
After hearing the argument, the court asked DoT to produce the communications between it and S Tel at the next hearing. The court may consider holding in-camera proceedings as petitioner's counsel Prashant Bhushan is making allegations based on some source information which gets highlighted in the media. What the CBI finds we will only come to know when the chargesheet is filed Harish Salve.