The CBI chargesheet has said that investigations have confirmed that the tainted, former telecom minister, A Raja arbitrarily changed the cut-off date for receiving application for telecom licences, especially to favour Unitech Wireless and Swan Telecom. The CBI has said that it was Raja’s PS, RK Chandolia who asked the concerned officer to discontinue accepting applications once Unitech Wireless’ application came in.
?A Raja took over as telecom minister in May 2007 and at this time he entered into conspiracy with other accused persons and companies with a purpose to issue UAS licences to Swan Telecom, which had already applied and companies promoted by Unitech Ltd, which were yet to apply for UASL, by manipulating the priority list on the basis of the letter of intent (LOI) compliances instead of existing guidelines on the basis of date of applications as per availability of spectrum?, the CBI has noted in its chargesheet.
The CBI has said that the process of tinkering with the cut-off date to receive applications was handled by Raja’s man friday, RK Chandolia. Chandolia had been continuously monitoring the status of the reciept of applications in Access Servicess cell in the DoT. He was continuously updating himself with the status of applications and names of applicant companies. Finally on September 24, 2007, he enquired from the access service cell whether applications of Unitech had been received and directed no applications be accepted after the receipt of applications from Unitech.