Congress and DMK leaders, celebrating the acquittal of all 18 individuals accused in the 2G telecom licence case, could soon be in for an unpleasant surprise.

What CBI special judge OP Saini said about the UPA government's PMO is more damaging than the acquittal of mid-level DMK leaders like A Raja and Kanimozhi. The verdict shifts the spotlight to the two principal secretaries in the Manmohan Singh PMO, Pulok Chatterjee and TKA Nair.

Here's the damning part of justice Saini's verdict: "It was not Raja, but Pulok Chatterjee, in consultation with TKA Nair, (who) had suppressed the most relevant and controversial part of the letter of A Raja from the then hon'ble PM. Pulok Chatterjee ought to have taken note of these facts in his earlier note dated January 6, 2008 itself, but did not do so for reasons best known to him and placed only a partial view before the then hon'ble PM.

Pulok Chatterjee

"It is clear from the record of the case that issue of LOIs (letters of intent) and grant of UAS licence by changed criteria was creating controversy in the country leading to the registration of the instant case. A Raja had justified the changed criteria, as referred to above, but this important issue was not placed before the then hon'ble prime minister at the right time. This was done only when the controversy broke out after issue of LOIs on January 10, 2008."

From the time the 2G scam was exposed nearly a decade ago, the brilliant, painstaking reportage of Shalini Singh (first for The Times of India, then for The Hindu) and J Gopikrishnan (for The Pioneer) pointed out that the real culprits in subverting the 2G telecom licence policy from first-come-first-served to first-pay-first-served were the respective high commands of the Congress and the DMK.

Raja was merely the bagman. He was "instructed" to change the first-come-first-served policy and did so obediently. He wrote three letters in 2007-08 to prime minister Manmohan Singh to inform him of the change. Pulok Chatterjee's role now becomes crucial. Who exactly is Chatterjee? A senior bureaucrat, Chatterjee was a Gandhi family favourite. He was deputy secretary in Rajiv Gandhi's PMO in 1985. He later became officer on special duty (OSD) to Sonia Gandhi. In between he worked at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

When the UPA government took office in 2004, Chatterjee was posted back in the PMO as joint secretary when Manmohan Singh was nominated prime minister by Sonia after her "inner voice" told her not to accept the position herself.

During the 2007-08 2G telecom licence allocations, it was Chatterjee who, as justice Saini observed in his order, held back crucial information from Raja's letter to Manmohan Singh about a drastic change in the licencing policy to first-pay-first served.

It is worth repeating justice Saini's scathing observation: "It was not Raja, but Pulok Chatterjee, in consultation with TKA Nair (who) had suppressed the most relevant and controversial part of the letter of A Raja from the then hon'ble PM."

Manmohan Singh got to know about the controversial, even perverse, change in the licence allocation policy only on January 10, 2008 - after the allocations had already been made. This is why justice Saini observed cryptically: "If (the hon'ble PM's) words, 'I want the PMO to be at arm's length', are read in the context of the case, it is clear that they are aimed at officials of the PMO and not at A Raja."

Clearly therefore, Raja was always the bagman, carrying out instructions from his bosses in the UPA coalition government and through his three letters addressed to the prime minister keeping himself safe from future prosecution. That is what saved him from being indicted in justice Saini's order.

As the Supreme Court observed in February 2012: "The exercise undertaken by the officers of the department of telecom between September 2007 and March 2008, under the leadership of the then minister of communications and information technology (Raja), was wholly arbitrary, capricious and contrary to public interest apart from being violative of the doctrine of equality."

TKA Nair

So were bribes not paid to secure out-of-turn telecom licences? The circumstantial evidence indicates they were. The CBI prosecution, begun by the UPA government, deliberately focused on Raja and others who were secondary to the scam. Justice Saini's verdict clearly indicts the Mamohan Singh PMO and its senior officials Pulok Chatterjee and TKA Nair.

Under whose instructions were these officials operating? Who ordered them to show only a part of Raja's letters to Manmohan Singh, effectively misleading the prime minister, in itself a grave offence?

The top leadership of the Congress and DMK in the UPA coalition government were the only functionaries with the power to order Chatterjee and Nair to ensure that the subversion of the telecom licence process did not reach the prime minister eyes.

The question remains: Why did the BJP-led NDA government let the 2G case meander after it took office in 2014? Justice Saini's comment that the prosecution seemed to have lost interest in the case is an indictment of the Narendra Modi government's lax approach. Its law minister, finance minister and home minister stand exposed as both incompetent and ineffective in failing to direct the prosecution to probe Manmohan Singh's PMO and the high command of the Congress and DMK that remote-controlled it.

Unless the Modi government's appeal to a higher court against justice Saini's verdict focuses on the real culprits and not their bagmen, it will not only lose that appeal but also its credibility and future electability.

For the Congress and DMK top leadership though, the unpleasant surprise is this: The spotlight they avoided in the 2G telecom case for a decade is now firmly on them.

Also read: 2G verdict: Hard-hitting questions no one is asking