JOIN USSpeaking at a seminar on the “real significance of scams” organised in memory of the late jurist Nani A Palkhivala, he said extending the probe’s ambit to 2001 should not become a reason for delaying the prosecution of Raja. “I welcome the directive of the Supreme Court. However, separate FIRs can be filed (on earlier periods),” Shourie said.
“Thus, we will establish that the telecom ministry was not always headed by the Rajas,” he said and expressed anguish that Raja had been “lying” all along that he followed the FFS policy as laid down earlier.
Shourie said Raja did not even consider the 370-odd pending applications (for licences) as on September 2007 after he took over from Dayanidhi Maran.
Instead, the DMK leader chose to deal with “real estate companies” which had no experience in the telecom sector. After announcing that he would accept applications on a first-cum-first-serve basis till October 1, 2007, Raja unilaterally advanced that date to September 25, 2007, Shourie explained.
In January 2008, Raja changed the “very criterion” of FFS by shifting from “the date and time of the applications received”, to the “date and time of fulfilment of conditions in the letter of intent”.
Raja even changed the priority list by putting Swan Telecom on top. That firm later ran away after selling its licence. On the day of granting licences, even “strong arm tactics” were used at Sanchar Bhavan to prevent some from going up with their Demand Drafts, he said. Shourie asserted that he was ready to answer all the questions before the CBI.
Defending the FFS policy, Shourie said it was basically a good policy to start with. Under that, “if you get a licence, then a certain amount of spectrum came along with it.”
Later, licencees who, on a first-come-first serve basis, were able to show that their subscriber base had increased, were given more spectrum, he pointed out.
More importantly, this was not the only principle. There were other criteria like net worth of the companies and so on, when it was implemented during “Pramod Mahajan’s and my time,” Shourie explained. But in Raja’s case, everything was subverted, he stressed.
“I took up this point to the prime minister once with all the documents,” said Shourie. The FFS defence which Raja put up “did not cut ice even with the PM (Manmohan Singh),” Shourie said.