If the CBI raids on ex-telecom minister A Raja, Tata lobbyist Niira Radia, as well as close associates of Raja including an NGO affiliated to DMK chief Karunanidhi?s daughter, actually manage to find any evidence three years after the scam, it?ll only go to show the ex-minister was not only corrupt, he was incompetent. While the CAG report documents the loss he caused to the exchequer, and also documents the manner in which he did this, it has enough to show the minister didn?t even get his paperwork right. The firms he favoured did not have the necessary documentation and, if you please, never even had the requisite net worth requirements?that, and not the undervaluation of the licences, is the only angle that the government is pursuing right now. It is the transfer of funds to these entities, primarily, that the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate are supposed to be investigating. Whether Raja?s chartered accountant or the havala operators he is supposed to have been dealing with still have the details and whether the Radia Records can be admitted as evidence in court is a completely different matter?keep in mind the sorry fate of the Jain havala diaries and how that case came to an end once the courts said they could not be admitted as evidence. What is also under investigation are the loans given by groups such as the Tatas to some of Raja?s beneficiaries, like real-estate major Unitech and others.
More than Raja, the CBI raids also prove what we?ve known all along, that the government was keen to hush up matters, that the public outrage and the Supreme Court?s anger after various PILs were filed is what got the government to get serious about the investigation?so much for the Congress president?s statement that the JPC was a political ploy, given that the CBI was already investigating the matter under the Court?s supervision. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has sought to reassure India Inc, which is rattled by its private conversations getting out, and possibly even ones that could shed light on the very public corruption. But the real issue is that the government is on test, to see if it allows the probe, into even such blatant wrong-doing, to go nowhere. The havala and other investigations and the court process could take decades. It is important not to link the two?what Kapil Sibal does with the licences and the actual money trail. Linking the two would result in a long delay, by which time the companies involved would have managed to get several million customers. There will then be pressure, like there was on Arun Shourie in 2003, to legitimise full-blown mobility by limited-mobility players?ironically this is the principal charge the government is interested in laying at the BJP?s door, and more than anything else also probably explains why the Trai chief in Shourie?s tenure was raided.