New Delhi, April 15
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today filed its reply on the bail pleas filed by five corporate honchos accused in the 2G Spectrum scam and sought their custody, saying that they could influence the witnesses and might abscond in order to avoid trial.

“The accused hold high positions and since some of the witnesses belong to the corporate world and have worked under them, there is a possibility that the accused would try to influence the witnesses,” the CBI said before the court of additional session judge OP Saini.

The special public prosecutor of the CBI, UU Lalit, said: “Considering the matter on record, complicity of the accused in the crime is clearly made out. The alleged offences are serious and have made deep inroads into public interest and financial affairs of the state.”

The submissions came after the court on April 13 asked the agency to file its reply on the bail applications of the corporate honchos - director of Swan Telecom, Vinod Goenka; managing director of Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Ltd, Sanjay Chandra; and three top officials of Reliance ADA Group, Gautam Doshi, Surrendra Pipara and Hari Nair.

The accused had sought bails on the ground that they were not arrested during the investigation. The court has reserved its order for April 20.

The CBI filed its first chargesheet in the case on April 2. The chargesheet named nine persons and three leading telecom companies - Reliance Telecom Ltd, Swan Telecom Ltd and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Pvt Ltd.

Former Telecom Minister A Raja, former Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura, Raja’s personal secretary RK Chandolia and Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Usman Balwa have been arrested during the probe. They are at present lodged at the Tihar Jail. The agency, in the chargesheet, has alleged that Behura, Chandolia, Balwa and Chandra entered a conspiracy and manipulated the procedure for allocation of Spectrum to favour some companies like Swan Telecom and Unitech Group.

The CBI is likely to file the second chargesheet by April 25 and complete the probe by May 31.

Mumbai, April 15
Following a record sugarcane crop, Maharashtra is saddled with excess sugar and faces a major problem of storage, according to industry representatives.So far, the state has completed crushing of 676.78 lakh tonne cane, thereby producing 76.21 lakh tonne sugar, according to Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation Limited.

Another 125 lakh tonne cane will be crushed by mid-May, taking the total sugar output to more than 90 lakh tonne, according to Prakash Naiknavare, managing director of the federation. In contrast, just 615 lakh tonne cane was crushed in 2009-10, producing 71 lakh tonne sugar, say sources.

With farmers still sending in cane for crushing, the state government has ordered mills in the state to continue crushing to prevent losses to cultivators. Last week, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar met representatives of sugar cooperatives and officials of the sugar commissioner’s office to ensure that mills did not stop crushing. “We have been told to crush the entire sugarcane crop produced in Maharashtra,” an official of the federation said.

The bumper crop has, however, added to fresh problems in Maharashtra. More than three lakh quintal sugar is stored in the open across Maharashtra as mills have run out of godowns to store the sweetener.

The sugar mills in the state want the Union Government to allow sugar exports before the onset of the monsoon. 

New Delhi, April 15
The Food Corporation of India (FCI) will move some wheat stock directly from mandis this time so that there is no choking of the grain markets. FCI chairman Siraj Hussain today said the state governments of Punjab and Haryana had also been asked to make all arrangements for proper storage of the wheat being procured.

“They (Punjab and Haryana) are taking all possible steps to store the wheat in scientific plinths. We will also move some stock of wheat directly from mandis so that there is no choking of grain markets,” he said, adding that regarding storage, “we are in a better position this year”

Punjab CM had recently asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to direct the authorities concerned to expedite movement of foodgrain from Punjab and to augment the storage space in the state.

New Delhi, April 15
Strongly denying allegations that Enforcement Directorate (ED) Director Arun Mathur and his deputy Prabhakant were tainted, the government today told the Supreme Court that some of the PIL petitioners in the black money case had concealed their real identities.

Senior counsel Harish Salve, appearing for Prabhakant, contended that one of the PIL petitioners, Jasvir Singh, was an IPS officer posted as DIG in Uttar Pradesh.

Salve said another PIL petitioner, VS Pandey, was an IAS officer, posted as Principal Secretary to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, but did not disclose this information to the SC. Jasvir had a close official connection with Pandey, he said.

A Bench comprising Justices B Sudershan Reddy and SS Nijjar said the petitioners should have disclosed “full and complete facts, particularly the fact that Pandey was Principal Secretary of the Chief Minister of a particular state.”

Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium refuted the charges that the CBI had raided the house of ED Director and Prabhakant had been on CBI’s “doubtful” list.

He also denied that Mathur and Prabhakant had visited Kolkata on July 1, 2009 and enjoyed the hospitality of Peerless India Ltd, the company that was under ED probe. The Solicitor General said Prabhakant was on duty that day in Delhi. However, they had visited Kolkata in the last week of June and had stayed in one Peerless Inn, which was a different company, and paid the room rent from their official allowances. Also, the ED had investigated the Peerless India Ltd case in the 1990s and the case was now pending in the Calcutta HC.

“All allegations are completely baseless. The ED investigations relating to black money are complex. Unfortunately, these officers are spending their time fending off allegations, instead of focusing on the investigations,” the Solicitor General said.

Senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for some of the PIL petitioners, said the government was trying to deviate from the main issue of black money by finding fault with his clients on irrelevant issues. His clients had filed the PIL as concerned citizens, not in their official capacity, he reasoned.

The Bench, meanwhile, asked SK Dube, professor at IIT Delhi and a petitioner, to file an affidavit on the threat he allegedly faced from Prabhakant following his letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh levelling charges against the ED Director and Prabhakant. The Bench also asked Delhi Police Commissioner to file a further status report on the action taken on Dube’s complaint. The police today informed the court that it had registered an FIR on the complaint and was investigating.

The petitioners have sought a SIT probe in the case. 

New Delhi, April 15
The government representatives on the joint committee on the Lokpal Bill conferred here tonight to draw up their agenda for the panel’s first meeting tomorrow.Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who heads the committee, had a long session with his Cabinet colleagues who will join him in tomorrow’s deliberations with civil society representatives on drafting a strong and effective Lokpal Bill to tackle corruption.

The ministers have been scrutinising similar legislations in place in the UK, Finland and Sweden, which have provide for offices of parliamentary ombudsman to act as watchdogs.

Other government nominees on the 10-member joint panel are Home Minister P Chidambaram, Law Minister Veerappa Moily, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and Water Resources Minister Salman Khurshid.

But even before the two sides could begin discussions, a plethora of allegations have surfaced against civil society representatives - Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan - which could spell trouble for the government at their first face-to-face encounter tomorrow. Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, Right to Information activist Arvind Kejriwal and former Supreme Court judge N Santosh Hegde are the other civil society nominees.

Mumbai, April 15
The government will go ahead with the Jaitapur nuclear power project in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district, Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said here today. Speaking to reporters here, Ramesh said the government was determined to push forward the project and the safety aspects, including those related to the environment, would be taken into consideration.

The minister pointed out that there were little similarities between the Jaitapur project and the Posco steel plant in Orissa which was shelved following public protests.

“The Jaitapur project does not come under the purview of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and if there is opposition it would not be binding on us," Ramesh said.

The minister, however, admitted that the security systems of nuclear power plants needed to be reworked following the accident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant following the tsunami there last month.

“The security systems of all six reactors at Jaitapur should not be interlinked and must be independent of each other," Ramesh felt.