CBI Thursday defended Home Minister P Chidambaram in the Supreme Court in the 2G scam by blaming the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) for "jumping the gun" in spectrum allocation.

"The DoT jumped the gun," senior advocate KK Venugopal, appearing for CBI, submitted before a bench of justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly, while explaining how DoT did not want to go before the Telecom Commission on the issue of fixation of price for the spectrum.

He said Chidamabaram, who was then the Finance Minister, cannot be held responsible for the decision not to auction the radio waves as the Ministry of Finance was represented on the issue by the Finance Secretary during its meeting with the Ministry of Telecom then headed by A Raja.

While the meeting of the Telecom Commission was postponed from January 9 to January 15 in 2008, the DoT on January 10, 2008 issued 122 LoIs (Letter of Intents).

"DoT did not want the Commission to go into it. The base price of 2001 (for the spectrum) which was extended in 2003 continued. DoT jumped the gun," the senior advocate said.

He said Chidamabaram could not have taken the decision himself on the spectrum issue without consulting his subordinate officials, including the then Finance Secretary V Subba Rao, now the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

"The Finance Secretary would equally be culpable if you(petitioners) are saying about the culpability of the then Finance Minister. Any one person cannot be held responsible," Venugopal said and asked the bench not to rely on the Finance Ministry note addressed to the PMO, which was placed by Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy before it yesterday.

"Please do not act on the report (note)," he said while asking the bench not to pass order on Swamy''s application.

To buttress his submission that neither there was a culpability on the part of the Ministry of Finance nor of the then Finance Minister, he contended that even the CAG, which has estimated a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore, has "not pointed finger towards the Ministry of Finance".

"Anybody, who wants to condemn a person should not be allowed to produce any further documents," he said while opposing Swamy's plea to direct CBI to probe Chidamabaram's role in the 2G scam on the basis of documents provided by him for making him co-accused with Raja in the case.

"Please allow the system to continue as usual," Venugopal said in order to substantiate his contention that since the charge sheet in the case arising on the culpability of Raja has been filed, the apex court's role to monitor the probe in connection with that case comes to an end.

He said the apex court can continue to monitor probe of other two cases about the alleged role of former union minister Dayanidhi Maran and the corporate house, Essar Group and Loop Telecom in the scam.