New Delhi: After much speculation, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told a special court here on Monday that former Telecom minister A Raja was the “main conspirator” of the 2G spectrum allocation scam.
He “strategically” planned granting of second generation spectrum licences to the companies whom he favoured and deliberately advanced the cutoff date for submission of applications to keep other companies out of the race, special public prosecutor Anand Grover told Special CBI Judge OP Saini, advancing his arguments in the case.
“He was the main conspirator,” the CBI counsel charged.
Referring to a letter written by the then law minister to the Prime Minister, Grover said Hansraj Bhardwaj had recommended that key policy issues relating to the allocation of spectrum should be referred to the empowered group of ministers for their consideration.
But, Raja rejected it, “apparently” to get rid of any scrutiny by anyone else. “To assuage the then Prime Minister’s concerns over the issue, he (Raja) then wrote a letter to him (saying) that he is prescribing with existing norms of first-come, first-serve policy and that he has also taken the concurrence of then solicitor general and Minister of External Affairs in this regard, which was not the case,” Grover added.
The CBI said that Raja’s decision to decide eligibility of firms for grant of spectrum on the basis of compliance conditions of letters of intent was “unilateral” as it did not come from the department of telecom.
“Then, the draft press release was also forged about the concurrence of then solicitor general,” the agency charged.
