The CBI, probing the 2G Spectrum scam, on Tuesday confronted former telecom minister A. Raja with former telecom commission member K. Sridhar and asked direct questions related to the allotment of “spectrum” to those applicants who were allotted Unified Access Service (UAS) licences.
The CBI officials, who are expected to conduct further raids to collect more documents, also asked direct questions from the minister and the official related to the issue of giving “in principle” approval for using GSM technology to three operators, who had applied for the use of alternate technology, sources said.
Sources further added: “Mr Raja was asked very specific question in front of Mr Sridhar as to why the department of telecommunication decided to issue Letter of Intent (LoI) only to those applicants, who had applied for the licence only up to September 25, 2007. The department had received a total of 575 applications for UAS licences in respect of 22 service areas till October 1, 2007”.
“Both were further asked how the DoT acknowledged the acceptance of 122 applications and all the applicants, whether eligible or not, collected their LoIs. Besides, Mr Raja was asked why the DoT gave only 45 minutes time to the applicants to collect LoIs and some of the applicants even submitted bank drafts of `1,600 crore within a few hours,” sources said.
This indicated that everything was pre-fixed with a view to favour some operators at the cost of public revenue, sources said, adding Mr Raja’s replies on both the questions were not convincing.
The CBI on Tuesday also scrutinised the bank account details of Swan private telecom company as well as bank accounts of certain top officials of the same company.
The company was awarded telecom licences at very low rates.
“Soon after obtaining the UAS licence, Swan Telecom, which had paid licence fee of Rs. 1,537 crore only, off-loaded its 45 per cent stake for `4,500 crores and Unitech, which obtained licence for `1,651 crores off-loaded 60 per cent of its stake for `6,120 crores”, sources said. Mr Raja was asked whether the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had recommended the cancellation of licensees of certain applicants or not, sources added.