The CBI on Wednesday grilled former telecom minister’s close aide AK Srivastava for more than four hours in connection with his alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum scam.
The CBI on Wednesday grilled former telecom minister’s close aide AK Srivastava for more than four hours in connection with his alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum scam. During Raja’s tenure, Srivastava was deputy director-general (access services-I) and used to handle licensing.
“We learnt that Srivastava connived other senior DoT officers and granted unified access service licenses to select companies at much lower rates. They did this by rejecting others’ applications without any valid reason, thereby causing wrongful loss to the government and helping private persons or companies make wrongful gains. We questioned Srivastava over some of the decisions taken by him during his tenure,” a senior CBI official involved in the investigation said.
In October last year, the CBI had registered a case on large-scale corruption in the 2G spectrum allocations. Sources in the probe agency maintained that Srivastava and other top DoT officials enjoyed unlimited power during Raja’s tenure. Srivastava was the key official directly handling licenses and his
signature was in virtually every file.
Even though the CBI raided Srivastava’s office last year, not only did he continue to handle the same portfolio, he also prepared notes in DoT’s defence, which were then circulated to other ministries.
In fact, DoT’s reply to the comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) said it had no business to audit government policies drafted by him and processed by DoT’s legal advisor, Santokh Singh, who advised Raja on licensing and continues to discharge the same responsibility. A couple of days back, Srivastava was suspended by the telecom ministry, while Singh was recalled to the law ministry.
Meanwhile, the enforcement directorate has registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against unknown officials of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and unknown private companies in connection with the award of telecom licenses in 2008. It has already issued summons to key DoT officials, including Srivastava.
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