DELHI: The former Telecom Minister, A. Raja, told the special CBI court here on Tuesday that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exercised his “judgment” in deciding that a Group of Ministers was not required to finalise the disposal of 575 fresh applications for Unified Access Service licences as he saw no conflict between the Law and Telecom Ministries.
“He [the Prime Minister] did not see any conflict. He could have constituted the GoM if he wanted to. Just because he ignored the GoM, is he also in conspiracy? It is not dereliction of duty. It was the Prime Minister's judgment that a GoM was not required,” said Sushil Kumar, Mr. Raja's counsel and senior advocate, referring to the note put up by the then Law Minister, H. R. Bhardwaj, that the matter be referred to an Empowered GoM, given its seriousness.
This was then opposed by Mr. Raja in a letter to the Prime Minister on November 2, 2007.
Mr. Raja, who completed arguments on the charges against him, also signalled his intention to summon the former Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, as a witness.
(On Monday, Mr. Raja had said that Dr. Singh and Mr. Chidambaram were aware of the dilution of equity through the foreign direct investment route by two companies that were awarded 2G spectrum.)
On the loss to the exchequer, Mr. Kumar said: “The Union government has taken a definite stand, telling the people through Parliament that there was zero loss.”
Criticising the Comptroller and Auditor-General's report, which pegged the loss at Rs.1.76 lakh crore, Mr. Kumar said: “The accountant who calculated this does not realise there is no obligation on Mr. Raja to auction 2G licences.” Referring again to the CAG, he said: “I will say he is a legally illiterate person. He may be a very good accountant. The CBI has not relied on the report. They also know it is worthless.”
Calling his client the “kingpin,” Mr. Kumar said: “I am the one who is accused of conspiracy with everyone else in this case. The other accused are in conspiracy with a few others. I am the kingpin. I must puncture this case.”
Mr. Kumar alleged that Attorney-General G.E. Vahanvati, who was Solicitor-General then and later made a prosecution witness by the CBI, had not given any “credible evidence.”
Opposing the charge that he had forged the press note on how the Letter of Intent would be issued to companies that applied for UAS licences, Mr. Raja said he had only struck out the last paragraph, claiming that it contradicted the one directly above, which dealt with the first come, first served principle that the Department of Telecom had decided to use to process UAS licence applications.
Mr. Raja said the offending sentence he struck out was not in the file that was sent to Mr. Vahanvati for comments. “It was a new stipulation that was contradictory to the first come, first served principle and was not in the file. I don't know who put those two lines there. The press release has no life by itself; it is a mirror of the file. And [it] has to reflect what is present in the file,” Mr. Raja said.
“Where is the forgery here? I am accepting that I crossed it out, and wrote: ‘Press release approved as amended.' There is no dishonesty in this,” Mr. Raja said. In his witness statement, Mr. Vahanvati had referred to Mr. Raja's noting and said: “If by this, it is intended to convey that the press release as amended was approved by me, I have to say this is not correct.”
