Raja favoured Unitech, says telecom official

Former telecommunications minister A. Raja, now under the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), manipulated the allocation of 2G spectrum and licenses to favour Unitech, a senior officer of the telecoms department told a magistrate in Delhi.

A K Srivastava, the telecom official and one of CBI's star witnesses in the 2G scam, told the metropolitan magistrate that R K Chandolia, Raja's former personal secretary, called him on September 24, 2007, and directed him to stop accepting other applications after Unitech filed its application.

Srivastava, who oversaw the submission of applications for 2G spectrum and licenses, told the magistrate that Raja, Chandolia and former telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura, had connived to favour Unitech and Swan by changing the cut-off date and time for the distribution of the letters of intent and for the submission of fees.

He claimed that he told Behura it would be difficult to issue a large number of letters of intent in just one day, but the bureaucrat said it had to be done as Raja had given the instructions.

The CBI filed a charge-sheet running into 80,000 pages on April 2 in the special court that is conducting the probe into the multi-billion-rupee scam. Special CBI judge O.P. Saini has already taken cognisance of the charge-sheet.

The agency has charged Raja, a key member of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam – and close lieutenant of party chief M Karunanidhi – of conspiring with some bureaucrats and corporate executives in the allocation of 2G spectrum, and causing a loss of nearly Rs.31,000 crore to the exchequer.