Probe Niira Radia tapes, Prashant Bhushan urges Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan has urged the Supreme Court to order a probe into a taped conversation of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia that purportedly tried to fix a parliamentary debate.

The conversation, already in public domain, is part of the 5,800 secret recordings that involve Radia, top corporate leaders and politicians, among others. The Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), the non-profit organisation that Bhushan represents, has demanded that they all be made public.

The conversation, referred to by Bhushan, concerns a 2009-10 parliamentary debate on the Union budget. The debate was to be led by Arun Shourie, but former BJP president M Venkaiah replaced him at the last minute. In the recording, a voice, purportedly that of a former bureaucrat and now parliamentarian, is heard telling Radia that Shourie should be replaced with someone more favourable to Reliance Industries.

Shourie, a former communications minister, later claimed that "vested interests" secured his removal as lead partner for his party in the debate.

Bhushan claimed that prima facie the former bureaucrat is seen to be acting as an agent of Reliance. "This needs to be investigated," Bhushan told a bench comprising Justices GS Singhvi and V Gopala Gowda on Wednesday.