The Central Bureau of Investigation is likely to complete by August its probe into the grant of excess spectrum to Bharti Airtel and Vodafone in 2002 and subsequently file a charge sheet.
This was stated by the investigating agency on July 24 to the joint parliamentary committee that is also looking into the 2G scam.
The development is sure to embarrass the NDA, which was in power then with the late Pramod Mahajan as the telecom minister. Notably, Arun Shourie, another telecom minister in the NDA regime who took charge after Mahajan, has recently been given a clean chit by the CBI.
The CBI said in its presentation that around 50 witnesses have been examined so far and the investigating officer has submitted his report, which is under the process of legal scrutiny and examination by other officers.
The agency said that a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act was registered on November 17, 2011, against Shyamal Ghosh, the then secretary of the department of telecommunications, JR Gupta, the then DDG (VAS), DoT, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and unknown officials of the DoT and others.
The allegation against the officials and the companies involved is that on December 31, 2002, the then telecom minister (Pramod Mahajan), in collusion with certain DoT officers, approved the allocation of additional spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz and up to 10 MHz with additional spectrum charges of only 1% of the adjusted gross revenue of the operators.
This, it was held, was an undue favour to Bharti and Vodafone causing a loss of R508 crore to the exchequer.
The CBI told the JPC that a technical committee report dated November 21, 2001, had recommended that 6.2 MHz spectrum was sufficient in Delhi and Mumbai for another 24 to 30 months, if the networks were planned optimally.
The CBI said analogy and precedents showed allocation of additional spectrum from 6.2 MHz to 8 MHz would have implied spectrum charges of 4% of the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) and for spectrum beyond 8 MHz up to 9.8 MHz, spectrum charges of 5% of AGR. However, a decision to allocate excess spectrum was taken on December 31, 2002, in patent haste, bypassing member (finance), the wireless advisor and the Telecom Commission.
Further, the agency told the JPC that the suspect companies were allotted spectrum in the highly efficient 900 MHz band instead of 1,800 MHz.
As is known, the CBI had on November 19, 2011, carried out searches at the offices of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, apart from the residences of Ghosh and Gupta.
Both Bharti and Vodafone had then denied any mala fide on their part in the grant of additional spectrum, maintaining that all allocation was as per existing policy.
The matter of grant of excess spectrum had come to light with the report of the one-man committee under former justice Shivraj Patil, which was appointed by telecom minister Kapil Sibal to investigate spectrum allocation since 2001. The report had pointed out a number of irregularities under the NDA government.
The committee had held that the decisions taken by the DoT regarding the grant of unified access service licences (UASL), bundled with spectrum, right from 2003 onwards were neither consistent with the decisions of the Union Cabinet in 2003 nor the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
The Comptroller and Auditor General in its report on the 2G spectrum scam had said that the national exchequer lost Rs 36,000 crore as a result of spectrum given to incumbent players beyond 6.2 MHz.