Paswan8217;s perverse pleasures

Around a fortnight ago, just a few hours after he retired with close to 38 years of service, MTNL's chief S. Rajagopalan had an unexpected...

Around a fortnight ago, just a few hours after he retired with close to 38 years of service, MTNL8217;s chief S. Rajagopalan had an unexpected knock on his door. He was handed over a letter of displeasure8217; signed by Vinod Vaish, the secretary of the department of telecom services. To quote the letter, sent at the instance of telecom minister Ram Vilas Paswan 8212; how else would Vaish have dared to send it? 8212; for the above lapses the undersigned conveys Government8217;s displeasure to Shri S. Rajagopalan, CMD, MTNL.8217;

What are these lapses that MTNL8217;s chief made, and why wasn8217;t he sacked if they were true? Saran8217;s letter does threaten that this is without prejudice to any other action, which may be required, after further investigation8217;, but ministry sources say the reason why Rajagopalan was not sacked was that there was little tangible against him. After all, the three-member investigating team, had to extend its deadline several times, and still came up with precious little to indict him. But, first, the so-called lapses.

According to Vaish, Rajagopalan8217;s son Arvind has been working with Lucent Technologies since December 7, 1998 and Rajagopalan concealed this. When informing the government of this in January 1999, he said that he had no official dealings with Lucent. This, Vaish says, is incorrect as Lucent had bid for MTNL8217;s cellular business as early as July 15, 1998.

Problem is, Vaish has missed out a few important issues. No one, for instance, has established mala fide on Rajagopalan8217;s part. Lucent, in any case, bid before his son was hired, and emerged as the lowest bidder of the contract. Oh yes, Rajagopalan did ask his boss in the DoT on what to do with the Lucent tender since his son was working there, and he was asked to go ahead with the proviso that he shouldn8217;t directly participate in the actual evaluation of the tender. Second, since by then, cellular equipment prices had started falling, Rajagopalan allowed the Lucent tender to lapse. Now surely this was strange behaviour from someone who is supposed to have been helping out Lucent? And the second time around, MTNL awarded the tender to another PSU, ITIL which, in consortium with Lucent, was the lowest bidder.

But let8217;s carry this argument further. Let8217;s forget that it was only Rajagopalan8217;s doggedness that ensured MTNL is now just a few months from starting its cellular services despite the pressure from private players to stop it. Let8217;s concentrate instead on the possibility that Rajagopalan leaked vital information to Lucent, or that while evaluating the bids of various parties, he rigged it to make Lucent8217;s bid appear to be the lowest.

Now clearly if this is true, a CBI probe needs to be launched against him immediately. But no probe was ordered, however, because you need to have a lot of circumstantial and other proof for this 8212; none of the other bidders who lost out have even raised this possibility of foul play. And Rajagopalan was not even part of the evaluation which was done by a separate committee.

So Rajagopalan gets a displeasure8217; letter over unsubstantiated and vague misdemeanours. But what happens to Paswan and his ministerial colleague friends over somewhat less ambiguous cases of favouritism? Nothing, as the peculiar case of JT Mobiles, the cellular licensee in Punjab, shows.

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The crux of the JT Mobiles case is that the company had to pay around Rs 415 crore of overdue licence fee, but it claims it does not need to pay Rs 218 crore out of this, as its licence had been terminated for 693 days. Now, the DoT officials argue that this is not the case, that JT was not allowed to start operations only because it did not pay the licence fees. In any case, by March 31, 2000, the case had been examined threadbare by DoT officials, and even the Attorney General was of the view that the company8217;s claim was baseless. At this time, the government should have told JT it should pay up, or forfeit its licence. What happened? JT appealed to the minister of state Tapan Sikdar, who then asked for a review despite all the department8217;s evidence; this was then okayed by Paswan despite the telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh saying JT had no valid case.

The file then did the rounds again, was re-examined, and the bureaucrats reiterated that JT had to pay the full dues. A Cabinet note was nonetheless prepared, giving full details of the case, but leaving it to the Cabinet to take a political decision on whether JT should pay the full amount.

What is the game behind giving JT more time? Well, if JT has to pay the full amount right now, it may not be able to do so and will have to forfeit the licence. But if the disputed amount is kept aside for the moment, JT could sell off the licence right now and make some good money out of it.

The move to help JT out of its current mess, hopefully, will be rejected by the Cabinet in view of the overwhelming arguments against it. But while the technocrat gets pulled up on the basis of flimsy charges, politicians get away with far more serious stuff. That8217;s perhaps why the world8217;s second-oldest profession is so sought after even today.

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MTNL8217;s boss wasn8217;t sacked, but got a letter of displeasure8217; post-retiring. Why?