More than a year after it registered an FIR on the spectrum scam alleging criminal conspiracy under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the CBI on Wednesday morning raided the residences and other premises of former telecom minister A Raja and four officials, including former DoT secretary Siddhartha Behura and RK Chandolia, former private secretary of the minister. The other two officials raided were AK Srivastava, who till recently served as DDG-access services in the DoT, and K Sridharan, former member-technology in the Telecom Commission. Premises of Raja?s business associates and family members were also raided in Chennai.
However, instead of any applause, the CBI?s move raised more questions with the Opposition parties demanding Raja?s arrest and getting firmer in their demand for a JPC to probe the spectrum scam. ?The CBI raids have strengthened the need for a JPC probe into the 2G spectrum scam and show there was massive corruption,? CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said.
?There is a need to find out how the system has been manipulated and how can we improve it in the future,? Yechury added.
The raids are being seen as too little, too late because, apart from Srivastava, who is a middle-ranking official in DoT, the CBI never bothered to question Raja, Behura, Chandolia and Sridharan all these days even though as senior-most officers, they were directly concerned with the allocation of licences by tweaking norms to a host of ineligible companies. On its part, the CBI only said the raids were on with no arrests made so far and it would not be possible to divulge any further information at this stage. ?We have raided the premises of five persons. Raids are still on and any further details cannot be given as of now,? CBI director AP Singh said. When asked whether any arrests have been made in the case, Singh said, ?Not as of now.?
Later in the evening, the agency said in a statement that it had seized ?incriminating? documents during the searches at 14 places. ?Searches conducted so far at around 14 places have yielded recovery of incriminating documents,? deputy inspector general and spokesperson of CBI Vineeta Thakur said, adding that ?searches are still going on?. It is unlikely that any evidence would be gathered from Raja or any of the officials so late because the CBI gave them enough time to destroy them by its delayed action. Questions are being raised as to why the CBI did not interrogate Raja so far even though he resigned as telecom minister on November 14 and thus lost the ministerial immunity.
What surprises observers is that the action comes two months after a PIL on CBI?s tardy progress in the case was admitted in the Supreme Court. It comes nearly a month after the CAG report pointing to the irregularities was tabled in Parliament on November 16 and three weeks after the Supreme Court made adverse comments as to why Raja had not been interrogated in the matter.
Even the raids on Chandolia, who served as Raja?s PS and later economic advisor in the DoT, comes more than two weeks after he was repatriated to his parent cadre?Indian Economic Service?by the new telecom minister, Kapil Sibal. In case of Srivastava, it comes two weeks after his charge as DDG-access services was taken away by Sibal. Srivastava, however, has been questioned earlier also by the CBI. Questions have also been raised as to why the CBI has neither interrogated nor raided senior executives of any of the five companies who were allocated the 85 licences illegally as pointed out by the CAG report.