“Datacom, jointly owned by Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon and Mahendra Nahata of HFCL, is one of the major beneficiaries of the 2G spectrum scam. According to its date of application, it was number nine in the list of applicants.”
“However, on January 10, 2008, the basis of determining FCFS was changed, which according to CBI’s charge sheet was done in a criminal conspiracy to help certain companies,” NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) said in an application. The CPIL had filed a PIL which had prompted the Supreme Court to direct the CBI to register the FIR in the 2G spectrum allocation scam case on December 16, 2010.
According to the application, the department of telecom documents submitted before the Justice Shivraj Patil panel revealed that Datacom had moved to the number one position in 20 circles by jumping over Swan Telecom (in 11 circles), Idea, S Tel and Spice.
“However, Swan still remained number 1 in only 2 circles – Delhi and Mumbai where there is an extreme shortage of spectrum – and Datacom became number 1 in rest 20 circles.
Clearly, there was criminal conspiracy between A Raja, Swan and Datacom. Ordinarily, after change in FCFS basis, either Datacom should have become number 1 in all 22 circles or Swan should have been number 1 in all 13 circles (for which it had applied),” the application contended.
The CPIL referred to a first person account of an under secretary in the Department of Telecom before Justice Patil Committee with regard to inside happenings on the date of spectrum allocation on August 1, 2008.
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