Will ‘spectrum’ Raja go to jail?

Now that A Raja is out of the telecom ministry, everyone is asking the question: Will he go to jail?

If, as the Comptroller Auditor-General’s report says, he caused a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the nation, he can’t get off the hook so easily?

AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa, who leads the opposition in Tamil Nadu, has demanded that Raja be pushed quickly into jail, but the newspapers are more realistic about what needs to be done now.  (Earlier, Jayalalithaa had named Raja as guilty when a High Court judge had complained that he was being threatened by a minister).

Almost all editorials are in favour of a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation, and The Hindu, while admitting some such investigations have failed earlier, believes this time the composition of the committee in an era of coalition could ensure that the truth is unearthed this time.

The Hindu welcomed Raja’s resignation, and explained the case for an investigative committee with politicians on it:

In the face of growing evidence that the first-come, first-served policy was depriving the exchequer of huge revenue, the auction route should have suggested itself to the government… JPCs might not be a politically impartial way of getting to the truth, and the JPC constituted in the Bofors case, which was boycotted by the main opposition parties and was packed with members of the Congress and its allies, was nothing but a cover-up device. The situation is quite different now — in the era of coalition governments. The constitution of a JPC must not be allowed to hamper the investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Central Vigilance Commission, and the Registrar of Companies.

Meanwhile, Raja faces legal trouble for selling licences “like cinema tickets”. The Hindustan Timesreported that Janata Party leader Subramaniam Swamy would file a criminal complaint to prosecute Raja under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Prashant Bhushan, counsel for Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) is already fighting a case against the underselling of spectrum.

The New Indian Express said Raja’s resignation “should be the beginning and not the end of punishing the guilty”:

The extent of the scam became apparent only when 3G spectrum licences were auctioned in April last fetching the government `68,000 crore, against `9,000 crore the 2G sales had generated. It is easily one of the biggest scandals in independent India’s history, the full ramifications of which will be known only when a thorough inquiry is conducted and all those who cheated the government are brought to book.

The newspapers are looking at a long haul, and hinting that if Raja is punished at all, it will have to be after these investigations are completed. And that, as we all know, could take months and years.

And on Twitter, witty comments about the scandal continue to stream. Here is one:

@jhunjhunwala This country has dealt with too much Kalmadi, Chavan and A Raja. Pamela Anderson is God’s way of telling us that good things also happen