Justice Ganguly refuses to take blame in 2G verdicts

New Delhi, Feb 19: Justice A K Ganguly, who was part of a Supreme Court bench that delivered landmark judgements on 2G cases, refused to take the onus for the delay saying they were reserved by Justice G S Singhvi who had to take the call as a senior judge of the bench.

However, Ganguly, who demitted office after delivering the judgements on the grant of sanction for prosecution of former telecom minister A Raja and cancellation of 122 licences, said the delay was "not intentional" as judges worked under "tremendous pressure".

The judgements were pronounced after being reserved for more than a year and for 11 months respectively. "Now these two judgements were heard by a bench of Justice Singhvi and myself.

But both the judgements were reserved by my learned senior colleague Justice Singhvi. "I can tell you if the judgements had been reserved by me it would have been delivered long ago," Justice Ganguly said in CNN-IBN programme Devil's Advocate with Karan Thapar. When asked whether he was determined to deliver the verdict before his retirement on February 2, Justice Ganguly said, "Yes, otherwise there would have been a huge loss of time.

"Because these cases can't be dismissed off the cuff. These cases were heard. At least more than 30 hearing days were devoted. So judicial time is so precious, I would have felt very sad and people would have criticised if these judgements were not delivered," he said. He said suspicion on the delay and timing of the verdicts was "absolutely" unwarranted.

PTI