2G scam: Enforcement directorate grills A Raja lieutenant RK Chandolia

After corporate lobbyist Nira Radia, the enforcement directorate (ED) grilled RK Chandolia, a lieutenant of former telecom minister A Raja, for more than six hours on Thursday.

Chandolia, an Indian Economic Service (IES) officer, was Raja’s private secretary in UPA-I when 2G licences were granted. He has now returned to his parent cadre and is a joint secretary-level officer in the ministry of finance, which controls ED.

“He reached the office of ED’s Delhi unit at around 9 am and recorded his statement on his alleged links with the 2G spectrum allocation scam. He was also questioned about the money trail of telecom companies that participated in spectrum allocation,” a senior ED official associated with the probe said.

ED decided to question the IES officer after Radia admitted links with Raja and told the agency that Chandolia was the key man to make all deals on behalf of the minister and she was in constant touch with him.

Sources said Raja had granted Chandolia immense powers. Because of his proximity to Raja, former telecom secretaries Siddhartha Behura and PJ Thomas allowed him to have his way.

Chandolia got promoted to the joint secretary (JS) rank when Raja returned to the telecom ministry in UPA-II. In fact, the officer apparently helped Raja in arbitrary disbursal of 2G licences in January 2008.

According a senior telecom official, a JS-rank officer is not supposed to be private secretary to a minister. “Usually, this post is occupied by a director-level officer. Moreover, he was brought back in the department of telecom [DoT] by A Raja as economic advisor. This position was specially created for him, since DoT already had a senior economic advisor,” an official in the department said.

Chandolia used to handle policy matters as well as appoints of top officials in BSNL, MTNL, ITI, etc. This was done at Raja’s behest, since work allocation is the prerogative of the secretary but a minister can cite his preferences.

Sources said even after CBI raided DoT last October in connection with the 2G scam, then telecom secretary PJ Thomas gave policy-related work to Chandolia instead of shifting him out.

“One can judge the amount of power he was enjoying as instead of reporting to the senior economic advisor, Chandolia was directly reporting to the telecom secretary,” the DoT official said.