Vasan hails special court judgement

The Union Minister for Shipping, G. K. Vasan, has welcomed the dismissal by a special CBI court in Delhi of the plea of Subramanian Swamy to make the Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, an accused in the 2G case. He said that it was a “very clear, welcome judgement, which vindicated the stand taken by the government and the Congress party in the issue.”

The observations made by the judge while dismissing the case showed that the allegations made by the opposition parties against the government and Mr. Chidambaram were false, he said here on Saturday.

The UPA government would always respect the verdict of the court, be it from the Supreme Court or a special court. Both the judgement and the observations made it crystal clear that the case could not be vitiated by anybody, any further.

The core contention of the petitioner (Subramanian Swamy) had been dismissed and a clear message had gone to the people of the nation, Mr. Vasan said.

On the Kudankulam nuclear power project issue, Mr. Vasan said that the need of the hour was power and the plant should go on stream at the earliest.

It would bring prosperity for the people around Kudankulam and a power-starved Tamil Nadu and put the nation on the growth path. He pointed out that the country was producing 1.36 lakh mw of power whereas the demand was 1.82 lakh mw.

Tamil Nadu required 12, 000 mw against its production capacity of 7000 mw. In this deficit scenario, it was all the more important that the Kudankulam project went on stream, Mr. Vasan said.

Though safety concerns had been addressed fully, it was unfortunate that a few individuals, who were not technically qualified, were misleading people for reasons best known to them.

This was happening when scientists and experts were involved in allying people's fears at different levels. Poor, gullible people were told about security concerns without any proof by the anti-nuclear activists.

The Union Minister was confident that people would see through the game and put a full stop to the opposition and open the gates of secured development