CBI intensifies its probe in 2G allocation during NDA regime

NEW DELHI: The CBI has intensified its probe in 2G spectrum allocation during the NDA regime when late Pramod Mahajan was the telecom minister and asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to provide license agreements with all telecom providers between 2001 and 2007.

The DoT, in response to CBI's plea, provided the license agreements that the department had with Bharti Telenet Limited for Delhi service, Aircel for Delhi and Mumbai.

However, files pertaining to DoT's agreement with Hutchison and Streling Cellular (now know as Vodafone-Essar Mobile service), BPL and Idea could not be traced immediately and efforts were on to locate them, official sources said today.

In a letter to CBI's Dy SP R A Yadav, an under secretary in the DoT , said "efforts are underway to locate the remaining license agreements as requested and the same would be furnished shortly."

After booking former Telecom Ministers A Raja and Dayanidhi Maran in two separate cases, CBI in November last year had registered a case against former Telecom Secretary Shyamal Ghosh, the then Deputy Director General (Value Added Services) J R Gupta and two Telecom service providers Airtel and Vodafone for alleged irregularities in grant of additional spectrum.

In its FIR, the CBI had alleged there was a loss of Rs 508 crore to the state exchequer during 2001-07.

"The then Minister for Telecom and Communication (Pramod Mahajan) has been excluded since he expired," CBI had said in a statement but accused him of being a part of criminal conspiracy to allocate the additional spectrum in a "hurried" manner. Mahajan of the BJP was the Telecom Minister during 2001-03. UPA-I came to power in 2004.