Behura slams CBI chargesheet: Utter legal nonsense

The change in the first-come-first-served policy was made known to the PM

Dragging Prime Minister Manmohan Singh into the 2G case,former telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura on Thursday told a CBI court that the PMO was aware of the changes introduced by then telecom minister A Raja in the first-come-first-served policy for the award of licenses.

Taking note of a letter by Raja to the PM on December 26,2007,Behura’s counsel Aman Lekhi said: “The change in the first-come-first-served policy was made known to the PM. Nobody objected to it. The Council of Ministers also continued with Raja. How can a civil servant be held responsible for it?

Earlier,another accused Shahid Balwa had cited the communication between Raja and the PM before the court and sought to make the PM a witness.

As per the changed policy,the seniority in award of licences was to be decided by the companies complying with the terms of Letter of Intent (LoI) instead of the date of filing the application,the counsel said. This issue never arose earlier as at one point of time only one application was processed and LoI was granted and enough time was given to the company for LoI compliance, he added.

Behura also named the then Solicitor General G E Vahanvati and asked how he could be held responsible since Vahanvati had also approved the changed policy.

He also accused public witness A K Srivastava,then a senior official in DoT,of lying and concealing facts in his statement before the CBI.

Behura also quoted the statement of A K Dhar,the then ADG in the ministry,to prove his innocence. “Dhar stated that LoIs were distributed in a fair manner. No one said that he was discriminated against. It proves that Behura cannot be held responsible,” he said,adding that the CBI chargesheet was “utter legal non-sense” .

No record of meeting Behura referred to

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NEW DELHI: A day after former telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura dragged the names of the then finance minister P Chidambaram and the then finance secretary D Subbarao (current RBI Governor) in the 2G scam,Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Thursday contested Behuras claims over a December 2007 meeting held regarding the entry fees for 2G licences. We have looked into records. The records show that there was no such meeting. Neither Chidambaram nor Subbarao remember any such meeting, Sibal said. It is surprising that the then telecom secretary (Behura),who joined (Department of Telecom) on January 1,2008,is referring to a meeting of December 4,2007,when he had no personal knowledge of the meeting and has not produced any document to support veracity of his submission.