2012 yearender: SC blow to govt in high-profile cases, death to Ajmal Kasab

The 2G spectrum case also gave some anxious moments to Union Minister P Chidambaram after Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy dragged him for his alleged involvement in the multi-crore rupee scam. Chidambaram finally got a clean chit from the apex court which also rejected the review petition against its verdict.

The scam in the coal block allocation and government's decision allowing FDI in retail were also dragged to the apex court which, though refused to interfere with the policy matter, put some searching questions to government on FDI and asked it to take corrective steps to remove legal hassles.

However, the petitions alleging large scale irregularities in coal block allocation are pending in the apex court.

Amid these developments, the UPA-II government survived a scare when the Supreme Court by a majority verdict of 3 to 2 dismissed the petition filed by former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma challenging the election of senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee as the President.

However, there was another reason for the Rashtrapati Bhavan to worry as President's Secretary Omita Paul, who was advisor to Mukherjee when he was the Finance Minister, was impleaded as respondent in the petition seeking CBI probe into the appointment of U K Sinha as the chairman of SEBI.

Market regulator SEBI was making news throughout the year by acting tough against the Sahara Group of companies which received a major setback when the Supreme Court directed two of its companies to refund around Rs 24,000 crore to their investors in three months with 15 per cent annual interest.

However, desperate efforts brought some relief to the companies -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIREC) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation (SHIC) -- as a Bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir modified the directions of another Bench by allowing them to comply with the August 31 order by first week of February.

... contd.

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