Former communications minister A. Raja, who faced the CBI for the first time on Friday after the registration of the FIR in the 2G spectrum scam case more than a year ago, is bound to be confronted by the agency sleuths with at least 12 alleged deviations pointed out by the Supreme Court in its order laying down guidelines for the probe agencies to go deep into the matter and expediting the inquiry.
The top court has given numerical details of the alleged “deviations” by DoT under Raja in the grant of universal access service (UAS) licences for 2G spectrum. The court has given the detailed based on CAG and CVC reports analysing Raja’s actions ever since he took over the charge of the ministry in May 2007 and till the issuing of the letters of intent (LIO) to 122 applicants on January 10, 2008.
The top court in its December 16 order had said the “CBI shall conduct thorough investigation into various issues highlighted in the report of CVC forwarded to the CBI director on October 12, 2009 and the report of the CAG, who have prima facie found serious irregularities in the grant of licences to 122 applicants.”
“The CBI should also probe how licences were granted to a large number of ineligible applicants and who was responsible for the same and why the Trai and the DoT did not take action against those licensees who sold their stakes/equities for many thousand crores and also against those who failed to fulfill rollout obligations and comply with other conditions of licence,” a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly monitoring the probe said.
The alleged deviations pointed out by the court, include advancing of the cut-off date for applications from October 1, 2007 to September 25, 2007 hours before the granting LIOs to 122 applicants on January 10, 2008. With this single decision 343 companies were kept out of the race among a total of 575 applicants.
Other important alleged “irregularities” referred to by the top court were; ignoring the advice of the Prime Minister to have a “fair and transparent” approach in deciding the issue of 2G licence, ignoring finance secretary’s reservation on fixing 2G fee at 2001 rates, terming the advice of the law minister regarding referring the matter to GOM as “out of context”.