War of Words Between Arun Jaitley, Kapil Sibal

NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley launched a stinging attack on former telecom minister Kapil Sibal, saying the chargesheet against former telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh and telcos Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India in the 2002 excess spectrum allocation case was filed at the Congress leader’s behest, starting a bitter war of words.

Sibal hit back, saying that the BJP minister’s allegations were “manufactured” and denied that he had any role to play in the chargesheet filed in December 2012 in the excess spectrum case.

In a Facebook post on Thursday evening, hours after the Special CBI Court gave a clean chit to Ghosh and telcos Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, Jaitley alleged that the UPA minister “selected a retired Judge of his choice and asked him to unearth an ‘NDA Scam’ in telecom”, at a time when the UPA government faced allegation of scams in the telecom sector.


“Indeed the officers are guilty of fabricating charges against an honest civil servant and others. There is no doubt that the chargesheet was filed at the behest of Shri Kapil Sibal, the Telecom Minister in the UPA Government,” Jaitley said.

“An unsustainable chargesheet was filed against an outstanding and honest civil servant Shyamal Ghosh. The idea to attack the NDA was by including the late Pramod Mahajan in Column II as a deceased accused.”

The finance minister went on to add that the CBI special court “vindicated” the consistently maintained party’s stand that the chargesheet was full of fabricated facts. He questioned the role of the retired judge who “for the sake of a post-retirement assignment, agreed to lend his Offices”.

Reacting to the social media post, Sibal said, “I had never, as a minister, held any meeting with the CBI. The fact is that I had appointed Justice Shivraj Patil to look into what had happened in the telecom sector. I had never met Justice Shivraj Patil’s anytime during his inquiry”.

He urged Mr Jaitley to be a more careful about what he was saying. “He should not think that his past experiences with CBI, in managing the CBI, has been replicated by others as well.”

In the verdict issued by CBI Special Court on Thursday, Special Judge OP Saini criticised the CBI for distorting and fabricating contents in the chargesheet, and said it was filed for “extraneous reasons”.

He also asked the CBI director to conduct an inquiry against ‘erring officials’ and take actions against them as per law.

The case which dates back to 2002 involves the CBI alleging that both Bharti Airtel, then called Bharti Cellular, Vodafone India, then called Hutchison Max, and Sterling Cellular, also now a Vodafone company, were allotted additional spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz, in collusion with Ghosh. The excess spectrum was given at a loss of Rs 846.4 crore to the national exchequer in 2002, as the companies paid 1% of revenue instead of 2%, according to the CBI’s version of events.

Ghosh had consistently denied any wrong doing, while pointing out that even BSNL and MTNL had received additional airwaves under the same rules. The court has acquitted all accused in the case.