Nripendra Misra, former chairman of TRAI chairman and a prosecution witness in 2G spectrum scam case, on Wednesday failed to recollect in a Delhi court whether DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran was Telecom Minister in October 2006 in the UPA-I rule.
Mr. Misra, who was deposing before Special CBI Judge O.P. Saini, made the statement about Mr. Maran when he was asked about a letter written by the then Telecom Secretary D.S. Mathur to him as the Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
“I have been shown a letter dated October 19, 2006, written by Mathur and addressed to me in the capacity of Chairman, TRAI. In this letter, he conveyed to me that section 11 of the TRAI Act applies to a new category of licence.
“I am unable to recall at this point of time if Dayanidhi Maran was Minister of Communication and Information Technology at the time when this letter was written,” Mr. Misra said.
However, he said Unified Access Services Licence (UASL) guidelines were issued by DoT on December 14, 2005, when Mr. Maran was the Minister of Communication and Information Technology.
Mr. Maran was Telecom Minister from May 26, 2004, to May 13, 2007. His party colleague A. Raja, who succeeded him, resigned on November 14, 2010, and was arrested by CBI on February 2, 2011, and has been in jail since then.
During the cross examination by Mr. Raja’s counsel, Mr. Misra said he had received another letter on July 2, 2008, from ex-Telecom Secretary Sidharth Behura, facing trial in the 2G case, where it was conveyed to him that the “Department of Telecom (DoT) had been seeking recommendations of TRAI whenever a new category of licence was to be issued.”
