2G case: CBI court summons top telecom executives in 2002 scam

In what is being seen as a significant development, top telecom executives including Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, Ravi Ruia of Essar Group, and Asim Ghosh, former managing director of Hutchison Max (now Vodafone India), have been summoned by the CBI Special Court for their alleged involvement in additional spectrum allocation in 2002, PTI reported today.

Shyamal Ghosh, former secretary of department of telecom, has also been summoned on 11 April.

While the CBI charge-sheet had not named these individuals, special judge OP Saini said that the executives were in control of affairs at the respective companies, the report said.

''As such they represent the directing mind of the companies. In this situation, the acts of the companies are to be attributed and imputed to them. Consequently, I find enough material on record to proceed against them also,'' Saini stated the two page order.

The case goes back to 2002 when the telecom ministry, under Pramod Mahajan, introduced new spectrum allocation rules based on subscriber-linked criteria. Though the technical committee of the Department of Telecom had recommended allotment of additional spectrum beyond 6.2 Mhz only after the operators reaching a subscriber base of 9 lakh, the requirement was reduced by DoT to 4 lakh.

According to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the the decision to allocate additional spectrum to mobile companies in 2002 was a conspiracy to benefit Bharti Airtel.

Meanwhile, in an internal note to the Department of Personnel and Training which Business Line, claims to have seen, the anti-corruption branch of the investigating agency claimed it had prime-facie evidence that the role of Bharti Airtel was greater than other players that had also benefited from the policy decision.

''It is relevant to note that only Bharti Cellular had reached the subscriber base of 4 lakh as on December 31, 2001 and of 5 lakh on January 31, 2002, that is on the day the said decision was taken,'' the CBI said in the note.

According to the CBI, the decision for allocation of additional spectrum without suitable increase in revenue share caused undue advantage of Rs846 crore to various mobile companies but half of this was on account of Bharti Airtel.

The investigating agency said however, no evidence had emerged indicating any overt act or criminal intent on the part of any person belonging to the telecom companies that benefited from the policy decision.

An FIR had already been filed against Shyamal Ghosh and JR Gupta, the then deputy director-general of DoT, for entering into a criminal conspiracy with Bharti Airtel and Hutchison Max (now Vodafone India), by the CBI.

The investigating agency had alleged that Gupta, in a note put up on 31 January, 2002 ''wrongly'' mentioned that a consensus had emerged on allocating additional spectrum. Mahajan had given the final approval the same day ''in haste.''

The CBI had stated the reason why such an undue was shown. ''Airtel's IPO was open and immense interest would have followed on such allocation of additional spectrum… the number of share applied for on the very next day disproportionately increased,'' the note stated.