Telecom corruption by Raja

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Topic started by Waterloo on Fri Oct 23 2:28:51 2009. [Full View]

The CBI on Thursday searched offices of the Department of Telecom in connection with alleged irregularities in allocation of 2G spectrum to some of the new players.

CBI sources said a team of its sleuths were conducting searches at the Sanchar Bhawan in New Delhi after registering a case in this connection last evening.

But Union Telecom Minister A Raja, under scanner for the alleged irregularities, denied any rules were violated and said he won't resign.

"All decisions on allocation of 2G spectrum has been taken as per TRAI recommendations and as per approval of the Prime Minister. There is no question of resignation," he said.

But the CBI sources said that all records pertaining to the allocation of spectrum to new players in January 2008 will be taken to see if there were irregularities in the process.

None of the DoT official was available for comments.

In 2008, eight new players were given licences along with bundled 4.4 MHz spectrum to start mobile services.

The telecom ministry had come under attack for doling out spectrum very cheap compared to its actual market value.

CVC had recommended a CBI probe into the procedures followed for selecting companies for giving 2G spectrum.

Eyebrows were raised when two of the new players - Unitech Wireless Services and Swan Telecom -- sold part of their stake at huge premium within days of getting the licences.

The government had given telecom licence along with start up spectrum at Rs 1,651 crore for pan-Indian services.

http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/telecom_was_2g_spectrum_sold_too_cheap.php

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From: joe on Wed Oct 28 23:39:58 2009.

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P_R wrote:

இதுலேர்ந்து ஒண்ணு தெரியுது, நம்ம ஹப்-ல திமுக நிலைமை ரொம்ப மோசமா இருக்கு-னு LOL

அது எப்பவுமே திமுக-க்கு நல்லது .

பொதுவா ஹப் நிலைமையும் ஒட்டு மொத்த பொதுமக்கள் நிலைமையும் தலைகீழாத் தான் இருக்கும்

From: Waterloo on Fri Oct 30 1:30:41 2009. [Full View]

'A Cover-Up Operation'
It's a scam involving close to Rs 60,000 crores and the BJP is on the offensive: 'It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister has chosen to comment on the innocence of the minister even while the investigations are on'
Arun Jaitley PRINT SHARE COMMENTS

The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a regular case with regard to the allotment of spectrum for the 2-G license issued by the Department of Telecommunications in 2007. Offices of the Department of Telecommunications have been searched and various documents have been seized. Even when the investigations were going on and the accusing finger categorically points to the Telecommunication minister, A. Raja, the Prime Minister has today made a statement that the allegations against the Telecom minister A. Raja were not correct. He has further said that whatever the Opposition says is not always correct. To Shri A. Raja’s statement that he had kept the Prime Minister informed of what he was doing, the Prime Minister has said – “ I would not like to join issue in public with my Cabinet colleague.” Obviously, the Prime Minister is in no position to agree or disagree.

The allegations against Shri A. Raja and the officers of the Department of Telecommunications are very clear. In 2007 an open license regime was recommended. Applications for telecom licenses were invited setting 1st October, 2007 as the deadline. The first allegation is that even when applications were invited till 1.10.2007, an artificial cut-off date i.e. 25.9.2007 was created and applications received between 25.9.2007 and 1.10.2007 were summarily rejected and not considered. Rules of the game were changed after the game had begun. All friendly applicants, mostly real estate companies had been advised to put in their applications on or before 25.9.2007. This is not the Opposition’s charge as the Prime Minister has commented. It is now a judgment of the Delhi High Court, which has quashed the fixation of these cut-off date wherein many experienced players were left out and 9 licenses were issued to relatively inexperienced parties.

The next allegation relates to the amount to be charged for the licenses and the spectrum allocation from these 9 operators. The license is merely an entitlement to operate the service. The physical operation can commence only after the allotment of spectrum. Together, the two were allotted at a price of Rs. 1650 crores per operator. This price was taken not on the basis of the 2007 market value of the license but on the basis of an auction held in 2001which determined the 2001 price. Thus, a valuable public asset was being allotted in 2007 at a 2001 price. The minister’s contention that the TRAI had recommended this is wholly erroneous because the TRAI had recommended that “the entry fee determined in 2001 is not the realistic price for obtaining the license. Perhaps it needs to be re-assessed through a market mechanism.” In any case a government asset should ordinarily be sold through an auction. The value of the license and spectrum in 2007 could not be the same as in 2001. The telecom market has grown phenomenally during this period. Obviously, the government and the Public Exchequer suffered a loss. The quantum of loss suffered in this case is easily determinable. The allotees post allotment did not operate the service. All that they owned was a shell company and a guaranteed spectrum. They availed the 74% FDI policy of the government and found buyers/ joint venture partners from the international market. The companies were overnight valued at over 200 billion dollars (over Rs.9000 crores) and a large chunk of the equity was sold by at least 3 licensees to overseas partners at a price of Rs.6000- 7000 crores. If the value of spectrum in each case was over Rs.9000 crores, obviously the government lost over Rs. 7000 crores per each license. For the 9 licenses collectively along with the spectrum, the net evaluation exceeds Rs. 60,000 crores.

This loss would be further compounded because the additional spectrum being made available in the market at a throw away price would suppress the value of the 3-G spectrum for which the government now plans an auction. If auction can be held for the 3-G spectrum in accordance with the decision of the EOGM why was the same principle was not followed while allotting the 2-G spectrum.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had raised the issue in Parliament in the Monsoon Session. The Party had demanded that under section 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, a public servant is said to have committed an offence of criminal misconduct if he by corrupt or illegal means gets for himself or any other person a valuable thing or a pecuniary advantage. This provision provides for a 7year imprisonment. It is clear that the crucial decisions in case were taken by the minister himself. The minister, Shri A. Raja is primarily liable for this offence.

It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister has chosen to comment on the innocence of the minister even while the investigations are on. There was no occasion for the Prime Minister to send such a signal to the investigative agencies directly under him. The fact that the minister belongs to an alliance partner of the UPA could not be a ground for a cover-up operation. This country has been robbed of a large amount of money by this misdemeanour of the Telecom Department. The compulsions of the coalition politics should not come in the way of an honest investigation. Propriety requires that while the investigations are under way, the minister should cease to be in office. His continuation in that ministry is itself a deterrent to an honest and independent investigation. The entire Nation is closely watching this investigation. Let this investigation not result in holding civil servants guilty and the minister innocent. It was the minister who is the prime accused and the civil servants were only carrying out his dictates
From: Waterloo on Sat Oct 31 0:07:21 2009. [Full View]

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sunil-jain-can-manmohan-ditch-raja/374249/

Readers of this column have reasons to feel vindicated by last week’s CBI raids in the telecom ministry as on various telecom firms that benefited from telecom minister A Raja’s largesse in early 2008 — he gave a handful of favoured firms valuable spectrum at prices exactly equal to those paid by buyers in June 2001. Readers would recall every vicissitude in this saga, from the wishy-washy Trai recommendations that allowed Raja to do what he wanted, to his announcing a “technology neutrality” policy to give CDMA-mobile phone firms like Reliance Communications (RCom) and Tata Teleservices a GSM-mobile licence after RCom paid the licence fees, and finally to the TDSAT verdict on the RCom part of this scam that ruled in favour of Raja’s ministry — in the event, they’re probably hoping the CBI will find enough evidence to nail those behind the scam that some estimate is worth $10 billion.

Given the CBI’s track record in investigations (think Aarushi) and the political interference in its functioning (think Quattrocchi), it is an open question as to whether it can conclusively prove the case. But there’s a far more serious problem the CBI has to deal with. Let’s assume the CBI gets all the proof it needs — where does it go after this to check how solid its legal case is? To Attorney General (AG) GE Vahanvati, India’s highest law officer. Well, when he was Solicitor General (SG), Vahanvati had opined in favour of much of what Raja’s done — how is the AG going to say that what he said as SG was incorrect?

Assuming he does, how does the CBI get around the fact that the TDSAT has also ruled in favour of Raja? The CBI cannot possibly complete its case without talking to the head of Trai since the regulatory authority is seen as independent of Raja’s ministry.

Well, the current Trai chief, JS Sarma, is the man who, in the TDSAT, ruled in favour of Raja — Telecom Secretary DS Mathur, who was against giving the licences at the 2001 prices and refused to sign on the file, was in the running for the Trai job but it was Sarma who got it eventually. How is the CBI going to bridge all these chasms?

Read, in this context, the affidavit filed by the government in the case registered by Dr Arvind Gupta against the allotment of the new licences. Gupta argued that while the government policy since 1995 had been one of auctions, Raja allotted licences on a first-come-first-served (FCFS) basis — on September 25, 2007, Raja announced he would accept applications till October 1, but later decided he’d process only those received till September 25 on a FCFS basis.

In response to Gupta’s case, in December 2008, Vahanvati okayed (“settled”, in legalese) a government affidavit saying there were no problems with what Raja had done — mind you, this was done long after the then Trai chief Nripendra Misra had said Raja had twisted his recommendations, it was done long after Swan and Unitech had sold part of their firms to Etisalat/Telenor, making it clear just how much the licences they got for Rs 1,651 crore were worth. A sample of the affidavit:

* After seven foolscap pages of the history of the procedure of allotting spectrum, it concludes, “The challenge to first-come-first-served is really academic, irrelevant and of no consequence… There is no person who is aggrieved by the first-come-first-served basis.” Apart from the fact, the arguments don’t lead to this conclusion, the conclusion is factually incorrect since the firms that had applied till October 1 but didn’t get the spectrum are all aggrieved.

* The decision to award the spectrum in 2008 at 2001 prices is justified saying the idea of making “the services affordable and viable… can never be achieved if the licence fee or the cost of spectrum is kept at a high premium… .” Well, there was an auction — only Unitech conducted it! And, in any case, Telenor’s tariffs will be determined by Airtel’s tariffs, not by the premium it paid Unitech for the licence. There’s even a chart in the affidavit arguing that the original cellular mobile phone firms paid a lot less than that paid in the 2001 auctions, so why should those getting it in 2008 pay more?! Surely an auction in 2001 would automatically suggest one in 2008 as well?

* As for the windfall profits made by companies like Swan, “this is a completely mistaken analysis”.

Given that Vahanvati is the government’s lawyer, it’s not surprising he gave his client (in this case, Raja’s ministry) the opinion it wanted. But his promotion to Attorney General suggests the prime minister and others — who try and distance themselves from Raja — were of the view that Vahanvati had done the right thing.

The TDSAT’s judgement on the ministry announcing its “dual technology” policy after RCom paid the money (this put it at the top of the queue for spectrum) is even more shocking — the tribunal called this “early completion of formalities” and said it was “not a matter that would require intervention at our level”. Despite this blatantly flawed judgement, the Prime Minister’s Office had no problem okaying Raja’s proposal to make Sarma the Trai chief instead of Mathur.

And we still expect the CBI to find evidence to nail the guilty? History, as Marx said, repeats itself twice, first time as tragedy, second time as farce.
From: Waterloo on Sat Oct 31 2:05:12 2009. [Full View]

Now Raja says NDA should be redited for the largest ever corruption

NEW DELHI: Union Communications and Information Technology Minister A. Raja on Friday countered the BJP’s allegation against him of corruption in spectrum allocation, and charged the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime with causing a Rs.1.6-lakh crore loss to the exchequer by allocating radio waves free to private telecom operators.

Mr. Raja said there was no question of his resigning from the Ministry as whatever he did was in keeping with the guidelines laid down, and duly approved by the Cabinet.

“Allegations that the country has suffered a loss of thousands of crores under my tenure are totally baseless. In fact, what happened under the BJP-led government is the ‘biggest scam ever’ the country has seen.” He said the NDA government gave the scarce spectrum for free to the then operators without approval from the Cabinet or the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. It favoured certain companies by allocating to them more spectrum, causing monopoly of the then players in the market and hampering competition. Almost 230 MHz of spectrum was illegally doled out in this manner under the NDA government.

Mr. Raja alleged that both his predecessors in the NDA government — Pramod Mahajan and Arun Shourie — violated all norms and guidelines to favour private operators and caused a loss of thousands of crores. Mr. Raja said he fought for new players, seeking to end the monopoly of the old players.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/10/31/stories/2009103161550100.htm

Mr. Raja , why didnt you raise this issue earlier ?
From: app_engine on Tue Nov 3 10:57:18 2009. [Full View]

JJ asks the same question to Raja, but in a 'vazha vazha kozha kozha' manner. (Possibly because no politician is free from such dealings - the only differences are magnitude and %)

From: Sanjeevi on Tue Nov 3 13:52:19 2009.

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app_engine wrote:

JJ asks the same question to Raja, but in a 'vazha vazha kozha kozha' manner. (Possibly because no politician is free from such dealings - the only differences are magnitude and %)

yes vazha vazha kozha kozha than but it has matter but athellam TN politics-ku sari varumanu theriyala. Kalaignar maathiri nasama pona kavithai solli TN makkalai eematha JJ-vaala avvalavu easyaaga mudivathillai

From: 19thmay on Wed Nov 4 0:16:44 2009. [Full View]

Joe, P_R allaarum thappu! He is Raasa not Raja!

தமிழ் வாழ்க! தமிழ் வாழ்க!!
From: ajithfederer on Fri Nov 13 14:52:21 2009. [Full View]

What happened to this case??.
From: app_engine on Fri Nov 13 15:00:23 2009. [Full View]

I think this (CBI raid etc) is used as a political trump card by Cong to give a check to DMK.

Or, the raid was only to make sure any adi-dhadi in booty sharing gets resolved amicably.

In any case, already the public has forgotten this. Also the opposition is so weak and suffering deposit-gAli situation in many places and hence not in a position to blow it at this point of time.

Just keep watching, it will be resurrected at another appropriate opportunity
From: ajithfederer on Fri Nov 13 15:00:53 2009. [Full View]

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