Pleading innocence,R K Chandolia,the former personal secretary to A Raja,submitted before a CBI court on Friday that the charges against him in the 2G scam are baseless as he only followed the instructions of the minister. He also sought to implicate Ratan Tata,corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and Rajas former additional private secretary and a crucial witness in the case Aseervatham Achary in the Tata Sky-Kalaignar TV deal. Chandolias counsel Vijay Aggarwal claimed Achary had conspired to bring DMK-run Kalaignar TV on the Tata Sky platform and acted as a conduit between Raja and Radia. When Radia referred to the deal during a conversation with Achary,he did not ask her what was she talking about. This shows that he was well aware of the deal between KTV and Tata being pursued by Raja, Aggarwal said. Going by this,Tata,Radia and Achary all should be made accused in the case, he asked. Pointing at the contradictions in the CBI chargesheet,he said: Why are they not in jail when I am in jail even though I have no involvement in the matter? He rejected the CBI charge that Chandolia and Behura,who were in the Ministry of Environment and Forests with Raja,were brought to the telecom ministry to execute the conspiracy in allocation of spectrum. If that is the case,then Achary knew Raja for 12 years and assisted him in three ministries and knew Tamil also, he said. He cited from documents submitted by the CBI to prove that he was not a signatory authority for any document and was not mentioned even in the list of senior DoT officials mentioned in the report of Justice Shivraj Patil on the issue. I am not a telecom company. A Raja was the minister and my master. I merely carried out his instructions. How I could have disobeyed him, he said. Chandolia also refuted CBI charges that he drafted the contentious letter to the PM dated November 2 and Decemeber 26,2007 that misled the PM about the changes in the first-come-first-serve policy. There are allegations that I assisted Raja in drafting the letter of November 2. But I only typed it. K Sridhara,then Member Technology,DoT and a prosecution witness,stated that Achary assisted the minister in drafting the letter and he (Sridhara) corrected the letter.. Why am I being singled out? he said. About the December 26 letter,he said,the minister had only asked him to send it to the PMO. Meanwhile,Special Judge OP Saini rejected Chandolias plea challenging the legality of the sanction to prosecute him.
