Calling the special CBI court's verdict acquitting all 17 accused in the 2G spectrum case a "bad judgment", senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Thursday said that he was confident that the order would be set aside on appeal.
"This is going to be short-lived. This is a very bad judgment and on appeal it is definitely going to be set aside," the MP told the media.
Judge OP Saini, who pronounced the judgment on the 2G case, slammed the prosecution and said they had "miserably failed to prove any charge against any of the accused, made in its well-choreographed charge sheet".
Referring to the court's criticism, Subramanian said that this reflected poorly on the government.
"Today, the judgment states that the CBI and the ED counsels were totally lackadaisical. They were not serious and he couldn't figure out what they were trying to prove. This is a very big condemnation of the government conducting of the case," he said.
He blamed law officers who are not serious about fighting corruption. And those who were honest, he alleged, were being harassed and forced to move out.
Subramanian Swamy also called for a clean up in the Finance Ministry accusing many former and current administrators of siding with the UPA government.
"(There are) many officers whose loyalties lie with Chidambaram, like Raghuram Rajan. Arvind Subramaniam declared PM Modi as a 'mediocre leader' in a op-ed article in Business Standard and said that the Gujarat experiment is all bogus. And he is our (Chief) Economic Advisor... There are many such officers, particularly in the finance ministry. Finance Ministry needs a purge and we must now fight corruption on a war footing," he said.
Subramanian Swamy also said that he had opposed the appointment of former Attorney General for India Mukul Rohatgi, stating that the latter had represented several of the accused in the case, including Unitech, in court, as it would send out a "wrong signal" to people.
Responding to the accusations, Mukul said, "Subramanian Swamy is in the habit of making wild and false allegations. I had appeared for some of these people at the time of grant of bail in SC, in 2012. After I became AG, I had nothing to do with the case. To make personal allegations is meaningless."
At the press meet, Subramanian Swamy had a message for PM Narendra Modi as well.
"I would like the Prime Minister to take a lesson from this and set up a war like council for fighting corruption," he said. He added that he had written a letter to the PM cautioning him that in the 2019 elections the public will hold the BJP government responsible for all their actions (or inaction), from black money recovery to fighting corruption.
"So now I think that the PM should take on fighting corruption on a war footing, and put aside anyone from the investigation who is not keen on fighting. There are people in my party who are not very keen on fighting corruption," he said.
The senior politician also said that the judgment should not be seen as a setback. He mentioned how former TN CM J Jayalalithaa was first convicted in the Disproportionate Assets case by a special court, then acquitted by the Karnataka High Court. But the Supreme Court went on to restore the special court's conviction.
"So this is not a set back at all. it is an aberration because of law officers (who don't want to fight corruption)," he said.