The CBI on Monday questioned former chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Mr Pradeep Baijal, in connection with its probe into SG spectrum scam.
According to sources Mr Baijal joined a PR consultancy firm, which provided consultancy services to several private telecom companies which were in the race of 2G allotment.
Sources said, “After completing the questioning of Mr Baijal, the agency will start questioning several senior officials of the Department of Telecommunication. There is a possibility that some of the retired officials of DoT will also be questioned by the CBI.”
“Certain DoT officials allegedly granted unified access services licences to a few selected companies at nominal rate by rejecting the applications of the others without any valid reasons thereby causing wrongful loss to the government and corresponding wrongful gain to private persons or companies.” The licences were awarded to certain companies by putting a cap on the number of applicants against the recommendations of the TRAI.
The agency is also analysing transcripts relating to 5,000 calls (out of which 3,800 have been analysed), 6,000 files and 80,000 pages of documents recovered during its raids last year. All these are being scrutinised, sources said.
The CBI had conducted nation-wide raids at the offices of the telecom ministry and several private companies in connection with alleged irregularities in allocation of spectrum to new operators in the month of October 2009. The agency raids were conducted at 19 places, including 10 telcom companies, across the country. The cities where raids were conducted include-Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai, Jaipur, Mohali, Chennai and Ahmedabad, said sources.
The ED, which has registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against unknown officials of the Department of Telecommunications and unknown private companies in connection with the award of new telecom licences in 2008, is likely to question representatives of certain private companies.
According to ED sources, some senior DoT officers allegedly connived with certain private telecom firms, who were awarded licenses, causing loss of an estimated `22,000 crore to the exchequer.