The CBI on Wednesday is once again going to file a status report before the Supreme Court detailing its progress in the 2G spectrum scam. The last such status report was filed on May 13 and since then, barring the opening of the investigation on former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, with former Aircel promoter C Sivasankaran alleging that the former had forced him to sell off to Maxis, the agency has not made any material progress.
The high profile case, which has netted 14 people, including former telecom minister A Raja, his aides and several corporate executives in jail, is being monitored by the SC. Till date the CBI has filed only two charge sheets and the indication is that the third one is going to be delayed. The CBI was supposed to probe the acceptance and implementation of the dual technology policy whereby CDMA operators were given GSM spectrum at 2001 rates. The SC had specifically asked it to register an FIR in the matter. However, as it files its status report on Wednesday the agency has so far not done any work in this direction.
?The CBI shall, if it has already not registered FIR in the context of the alleged irregularities committed in the grant of licences from 2001-2006-07, now register a case and conduct a thorough investigation… and also on the issue of allowing use of dual/alternate technology by some service providers even before the decision was made public vide press release dated October 19, 2007,? the SC order had said earlier.
As highlighted in the SC?s order, the CBI was supposed to probe all irregularities in spectrum allocation from 2001-2006-07. However, here it has sought time from the SC to probe the matter, which would only begin once the filing of charge sheets in the current 2G case are over.
Apart from four companies which were given dual technology licences, there were nine companies involved in the 2G scam. A total of 122 licences were issued to these nine firms by Raja in January 2008. Yet, the CBI till date has only filed one charge sheet and a supplementary charge sheet. The first one mentions only Raja, his former aides Siddhartha Behura and RK Chandolia and some officials of Swan, Unitech and Anil Ambani?s ADAG. The ADAG officials have chargesheeted not for dual technology case but on alleged links with Swan.
The supplementary charge sheet is about the alleged kickback paid by Swan Telecom outfits to DMK?s Kalaignar TV. It has failed to track any other kickbacks where the other companies may have been involved.
Most curiously, it so far failed to file any charge sheet against other beneficiary companies like Datacom, Loop Telecom, S-Tel, and Allianz (later merged with Swan).
The CBI has also not done anything on the role of the DoT officials in not doing anything on their failure to monitor the roll out obligations of the new licensees. This is important because the CAG has estimated a loss of R679 crore on this account. Also the role of former DoT secretary PJ Thomas needs to be probed as he was secretary for most of this period. Thomas was later made CVC but had to step down with the SC striking down his appointment as illegal.