The former Communications and Information Technology Minister, Arun Shourie, will appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation on February 21 in connection with the probe into the 2G spectrum scam.
Mr. Shourie, who headed the Ministry between January 2003 and May 2004 in the NDA regime, is likely to hand over some crucial documents linked to the scam to the CBI.
The CBI approached Mr. Shourie last week, asking him to appear before it in connection with the Preliminary Enquiry (PE) registered by it following a Supreme Court directive. The PE was registered against some “unknown persons” to ascertain whether the provision of ‘first come first served' (FCFS) for granting licences (based on the 2001 prices), passed by the then Cabinet led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was followed or not.
The CBI is likely to go into the minutes of the meetings held by successive Telecom Ministers, including the late Pramod Mahajan, Mr. Shourie and Dayanidhi Maran.
According to the CBI, nearly 50 licences were given on the FCFS basis, and Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular were among the beneficiaries.
Notably, the Justice Shivaraj V. Patil Committee that looked into the procedures adopted in granting of licences and spectrum allocation between 2001 and 2009 (covering both the NDA and UPA governments) has found that the October 31, 2003 decision of the Cabinet that okayed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommendations of introducing additional telecom players through multi-stage bidding process was not followed.
“On 24.11.2003, the Minister [Mr. Shourie] approved the formulation of procedure for grant of UASLs (Unified Access Service Licences) on the basis of ‘First Come First Served' as against through multi-stage bidding process. All this was clearly in deviation of extant policies,” the committee report said.
However, Mr. Shourie has refuted this charge. He has accused the government of not providing Mr. Justice Patil with all documents related to the case. Taking on Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal, who had formed the committee, Mr. Shourie said Mr. Justice Patil was a “hand-picked judge,” who gave a report that was “convenient” to the government.
“He [Mr. Justice Patil] will confine himself to documents given to him by Mr. Sibal's little minions and he gives this kind of nonsense,” Mr. Shourie had stated.
