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Next in 2G dock: Arun Shourie

CBI examining policy decisions taken during ex-telecom minister’s tenure.

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The CBI is now looking at policy decisions made during the tenure of BJP’s Arun Shourie as telecom minister after registering a case for alleged irregularities in allocating additional spectrum and causing loss to the national exchequer during his predecessor Pramod Mahajan’s tenure.

“Our probe as part of the preliminary enquiry into violations of telecom policy during 2001-2007 has revealed that allocation of additional spectrum allegedly violated the norms during the NDA regime, including Shourie’s tenure. Fresh FIR in this matter may be filed soon on the basis of these evidence,” a top CBI official told DNA. Shourie headed the telecom ministry from January 2003 to May 2004.

The investigation agency has claimed that decision to grant additional spectrum caused a loss of Rs 508 crore to the exchequer from 2001 to 2007. The agency on Saturday registered a case against former officials of the DoT and three telecom companies related to irregularities in the allocation of additional spectrum during Mahajan’s tenure.

The CBI made it clear that the preliminary enquiry, looking into the telecom policy violations, is still open and more cases could be  registered.

“During Saturday’s raids on various premises of the accused, we recovered some crucial documents pertaining to allocation of additional spectrum during Shourie’s tenure. Considering these documents, we are soon going to question some officials of the department of telecom of his regime, including secretary Vinod Vaish,” the CBI official added.

The agency has already recorded Vaish’s statement along with the statement of senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh, as the latter was heading the Group of Ministers (GoM) on the issue of limited mobility and unified licensing during the relevant period.

Shourie had appeared before the CBI on February 25 this year and clarified his position on allocation of spectrum and maintained that it was in the time of his successor Dayanidhi Maran in 2005 that some new guidelines were incorporated without the recommendations of the regulatory body, Trai, to benefit some operators.

While coming out of the CBI headquarters, Shourie had told reporters that he had not done anything wrong. “Not one of the 28 licences was given for any lucrative area. They were given for the areas in which nobody was going. The objective of the government was that in the North east, Bihar, Eastern UP and Jammu and Kashmir, mobile telephony should be extended and we achieved that,” he had said.

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