A former senior official of the Department of Telecom (DoT) on Monday told a Delhi court trying the 2G case that erstwhile Telecom Minister A Raja had “not consulted” him during preparation of the letter sent to the Prime Minister on December 26, 2007.
“I have been shown letter dated December 26, 2007....written by the then Minister to the Prime Minister.
“As member (Technology), I was not consulted either before the preparation of letter or during the process of preparation of the letter itself,” DoT’s erstwhile Member (Technology) K Sridhara told Special CBI Judge O P Saini while deposing as a prosecution witness in the spectrum allocation case.
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Mr. Sridhara’s statement assumes significance as the CBI, in its charge sheet, had alleged that Raja had wrote a letter to the PM on December 26, 2007 and he had “intentionally and deliberately misrepresented the facts about the first come first served (FCFS) policy...”
The agency had said the December 26, 2007 letter was written by Mr. Raja and co-accused Mr. R.K. Chandolia, the then private secretary of the telecom minister, and was “not a result of the deliberations of the Department of Telecommunications in its files as such.”
According to the CBI, the December 26, 2007 letter related to policy matters regarding grant of Unified Access Service Licences (UASL) to the applicant telecom firms.
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During recording of his statement, Sridhara deposed that he came to know about the December 26, 2007 letter when it was placed in the file of the department “after sometime“.
Regarding issuance of licences in bulk to eligible telecom firms on January 10, 2008, he said Raja had given the “logic” that “if more licences were given, there would be more competition and hence the tariff would come down and also that it would avoid possibility of any trading of licences.”