Post-2G, A Raja richer by Rs 3000 crore

New Delhi, Feb 11: Former Telecom Minister A Raja's case can be best described as a prince to pauper story. For a person who ruled the telecom raj a while is now embroiled in a controversy that can easily fall into the biggest scam India has seen.

With the tentacles of the 2G money trail spread across India and overseas, the CBI and Enforcement Directorate revels that A Raja got bribes to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore and led to a loss to the country's exchequer in the range of Rs 40,000-50,000 crore.

Accusations are rife that he sold spectrum at undervalued rates and made huge sums in out-of-turn allocation of spectrum to many private Telecom players through kickbacks. Both government agencies stated that Raja might have collaborated with certain parties to prepone the cut-off date for applications for spectrum from Oct 21, 2007 to Sept 25, 2007. The switch in the deadline impacted many other rightful spectrum candidates thus favoring certain parties.

In the report presented by the CBI and ED claimed that some companies unfairly benefited by getting licenses or drafts for licenses even before the official cut-off date of Sept 25, 2007. This date was revised once that gives the impression that the companies were aware of the proposed plan to change the dates. The companies that have been accused of unfairly benefiting are Unitech, Videocon, S-Tel and Aircel.

The license holders who capitalized on their licenses acquired huge foreign investments from US, Japan, and Mauritius.

OneIndia News