When it was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the CAG report on the Issue of Licences and Allocation of 2G Spectrum did not at all turn out to be contradicting with available information that the Congress and DMK had dubbed as media speculation.
In fact, the 77-page note not only indicted A Raja for flouting his departments own rules as telecom minister and ignoring all advice even as PM Manmohan Singh was not in favour of hasty allotment of licences; it spoke about the fraudulent means of several firms that connived with the DoT to secure 2G Spectrum licences in 2008.
The fate 13 such firms, which bagged the 85 licences by unfair means and is under TRAI scrutiny, is likely to be decided very soon. The CAG highlighted how DoTs first-come-first-served policy was flouted as Raja arbitrarily decided to issue Letter of Intents to all applicants, who had submitted their applications between March 2006 and 25 September 2007, thereby depriving earlier applicants the chance of a fair deal.
Those who submitted applications even a year later were given precedence over others. It showed a lack of transparency over the process adopted by DoT, which issued a press release on September 24, 2007, stating that application for licences would be accepted by October 1.
The DoT also was not diligent in examining the application submitted for the Universal Access Service Licences, leading to the grant of 85 out of 122 licences to ineligible applicants, the report said.
The firms found ineligible by CAG includes Datacom Solutions (later named Videocon Telecommunications) and Shipping Stop Dot Com who were allotted 21 licences each, Swan Telecom (now Etisalat DB Telecom, got 13 licences) and S Tel (got six licences).
Eight firms under Uninor brand bagged 22 licences by unfair means are Adonis Projects (6), Nahan Properties (6), Volga Properties (3) and Aska Projects Ltd (3), besides Unitech Infrastructure, Unitech Builders Estates, Azare Properties and Hudson Properties, which got one licence each.
These firms, created barely months ago, deliberately suppressed facts, disclosed incomplete information, submitted fictitious documents and used fraudulent means for getting UAS licences.
|