New Delhi, Mar 19: The Enforcement Directorate on Monday moved the Delhi High Court challenging the acquittal of former union telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi among others in the Rs 30,000-crore 2G spectrum allocation case.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was also expected to file an appeal in the High Court challenging the acquittal of 19 key accused in the purported scam, did not submit its petition today, news agency ANI said.

A Special CBI court in December had acquitted all accused in 2G case citing "lack of prosecutable evidence".

Judge  O P Saini, who headed the bench which relieved Raja, Kanimozhi and others of all graft charges, rapped the probing agency for failing to substantiate the allegations pressed against them in the chargesheet.

"For the last seven years, on all working days, summer vacation included, I religiously sat in the open court from 10 am to 5 pm, awaiting for someone with some legally admissible evidence in his possession but all in vain,” Saini had said in his 1,552-page judgment.

"Not a single soul turned up. This indicates that everybody was going by public perception created by rumour, gossip and speculation. However, public perception has no place in judicial proceedings," he had added.

The alleged scam in 2G spectrum allocation was sensationalised in an unprecedented manner, with the quantum of scandal initially being reported as Rs 1.76 lakh crore. Several national newspapers across had then ran banner headlines explicitly charging the then UPA government of a scandal amounting to "Rs 1,76,00,00,000,000".

The CBI chargesheet, however, reduced the quantum of scam to Rs 30,000 crore.

Apart from Kanimozhi and Raja, other key accused who were acquitted last December include, former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja 's erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra and three top executives of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (RADAG) -- Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 19, 2018 05:50 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).