2G scam: PM smelled something fishy but stayed away, says Arun Shourie

Source: ET

Former telecom minister A Raja's statements in court has opened a new political battlefront, withBJP demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister and P Chidambaram, who was finance minister when the 2G spectrum allocation was made. The telecom minister during the NDA regime, Arun Shourie , has been tracking developments on the 2G trial. In an interview to ET , Shourie discusses what he believes the PM knew, going by the file notings, Raja's defence that he inherited the policy, and other related issues. Excerpts:

Are you inclined to believe Raja's statements that he did everything with FM's and PM's knowledge?

Raja was very clever. He wrote about 18 letters to the PM during the 2G episode. And in each letter, he implicated somebody. For instance in his letter on 7 November, 2008, he says, "kindly recall my meeting with you on 4/11/2008 along with the honourable Finance Minister in connection with3G spectrum auction and one time spectrum charges for 2G. During the discussion, you advised me to meet the press, to explain the policy and rules.

Accordingly, I addressed the issues in the press conference today and explained the related issues including the dilution of shares as explained by the Finance Minister, of Swan and Unitech." The same day he issues a press release, in which he repeats that this issue has been explained by the Finance Minister. "This matter has been discussed and clarified with the Finance Minister," the press release says, in which this portion is in bold!

Then the FM himself has said, yes, the PM asked me to examine this particular matter. He says I examined it, I said it is dilution of equity and it was consistent with policy and procedure. If that is the case, how is it that now, the Enforcement Directorate, which is under the same ministry, has slapped a 7100 crore penalty on Etisalat? For violation of FEMA!

If everything was done as per policy and procedure, then how? It now transpires, according to ED, that Etisalat was given permission to bring in money from UAE. But it, instead, brought in money from an unknown unit in Mauritius. Secondly, on the same day, Syed Salauddin, a close associate of Mr Karunanidhi, brought in 380 crore. He was allowed to bring it in as a domestic investor and he brought the money from UAE. He has also been slapped with a Fema notice. Both things happened in Swan on the same day.

So, is Raja on firm ground?

All these statements these lawyers like Kapil Sibal are making now, saying everything was in order and there was zero gain to the companies, are statements that will be used by these companies to defend themselves in notices. Kapil Sibal is not the lawyer for the PM, he is the lawyer for Raja and the companies.

It is not Raja who is dragging in the PM now. You go back to Sibal's first press conference on this matter. There he said Raja kept the FM and the PM informed at every turn. I had said at that time that this is the sentence that Raja will use. That is exactly what has happened. Now you wait and see. When the Telecom Minister says the companies made no gain, that will be their defence.

The PM had said in Parliament in February that the then FM and Raja had agreed on a formula and this was communicated to him. Raja says the equity dilution inSwan Telecom and Unitech was discussed and cleared with the FM before the PM. FM says the PM wanted to know if it was a case of dilution of equity or divestment. This shows that the matter that has caused the most outrage, that these two companies benefitted from enormous valuation for a license they paid the government very little for, was known to the PM and he did nothing about the policy that allowed these companies to do this.

All this is in the public domain. Priority lists have been changed, the basis of first-come-first-served had been changed, cut off date had been advanced and 500 applicants were reduced for favoured companies. It now turns out from the CBI chargesheet that the license applications of three companies were approved even before the policy was announced.

You mean to say rivals would not have brought it to the attention of TKA Nair (Principal Secretary to the PM) and others in the PMO? Do you mean to say the Intelligence Bureau and CBI and others would not have brought this to their attention? I cannot believe that. Because our system is so structured that the PM and his office gets to know about every sparrow that moves in the government. That I can testify from personal knowledge.

This was all in public domain...

The notings on the file indicate that the PM was quite alarmed at what was happening. These licenses were given on 10 January, 2008. On 11 January, the Principal Secretary notes that the PM desires to take into account the developments concerning the issue of licenses. This means perhaps that he wanted to have a meeting about it. The file is submitted back to the PMO on 15 January. Now see what the Principal Secretary notes.

"Prime Minister wants this informally shared with the department. He does not want a formal communication and wants PMO to be at arms length". Why would he give this instruction to his officers unless he knew that there is murky stuff going on and it is better to stay away. I think he had full knowledge and I think he had deep apprehension that something terrible has happened and his only concern was let's stay away from the filth. That is not what a PM is supposed to do.

You mean, he knew but shied away from taking any action?

This particular sentence, at arms length, very well describes Dr Manmohan Singh's attitude in regard to CWG, defence acquisitions and every other major decision. Weapons purchases are not happening because Mr Antony (Defence Minister) also wants to stay at arms length on every decision. I think this will be an apt title for a book on Dr Singh's tenure as PM - At Arm's Length.

Raja has also said that if the policy was wrong, all former telecom ministers must be jailed.

Raja says that he was following earlier policies but he flouted them. Take first-come-first-served (FCFS): He says I will FCFS. Then he disregards pending applications. If you were following the policy, you should have dealt with them first. Then he says I will have this cut-off date of October 1. After the applications are received, he says no, I will advance deadline to 25 {+t}{+h} September.

Then he changes FCFS. First, it was time and date of application received. And suddenly it becomes time and date of fulfilling the conditions in the letter of intent. Where is LoI? People rushed for it. It says, within 40 minutes, bring a banker's draft of Rs1,650 crore. Companies he favoured already has those drafts from Mumbai and sitting in his office. How could they get it in 40 minutes?

When he could not find adequate spectrum for his favoured companies, he changes the priority list in the Punjab and Maharashtra circles. You show me one single, unique, solitary instance during my period or anybody else's period during NDA when any of this would have happened. So yes, people who do wrong should be in jail and continue to be in jail without bail.

‘Everything shows that the Prime Minister knew and did nothing about the (telecom scam)’

Source: Indian express

SUNIL JAIN: Kapil Sibal claims A Raja followed what the NDA government had done on spectrum allocation. As telecom minister during the NDA government, can you explain what you did?

Arun Shourie: People today cannot visualise what the the telecom sector was like at that time. Tele-density today is 60 per cent, at that time it was 4.1 per cent. There were large parts of the country where despite bids being invited, not a single operator had bid. There were parts of the country where bids had been won and licenses had been granted and their services had not yet been activated. For example, Northeast, where nobody had taken the licence. The whole sector was collapsing. It was rescued from that by shifting from fixed fee to revenue sharing. A third factor was that there were 20 types of licences and fees and this led to much litigation. The whole sector was caught up in litigation--we have had a small glimpse of that in the exchange of letters between Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Rajya Sabha MP)and Mr Ratan Tata. There were a host of issues related to licences and subsequent litigation and Ataliji (Prime Minister Vajpayee) told me that this sector needed cleaning up. I felt the main problem was the splintering of licences. This was one of the two or three sectors which was still left in the licence quota raj phase. I felt we must unify licences and the government should be technology neutral, it should be service-provider neutral, it should be service neutral. The idea emerged for a unified licence, in which a service provider can provide any service to any user anywhere in the country using any technology. This matter was referred to TRAI. TRAI wrote a very good report at that time (October 2003), the substance of which was that you should be technology agnostic, don’t go in for a universal licence in one go because it will lead to complications. They suggested we do it in two phases.

Sunil Jain: We understand that there was a controversy around Reliance and WLL, which was illegal at that time. TRAI came out with a recommendation, saying let’s go for UASL (Unified Access Service License), which meant that whoever had a fixed licence can offer WLL services. The second recommendation was that having done this, any future person who wanted to offer mobile services, will have to do a multi-stage bidding for that.

Arun Shourie: The concept was you will have automatic authorisation for anybody who wants to come in. With a low entry fee, divorce the spectrum from the licence. Whereas the earlier practice was that spectrum was given as a part of the government obligation for having allowed you to provide a service.

SUNIL JAIN: So TRAI allowed people the option of moving to UASL and in future, if anybody wants to offer a new service, please do multi-stage bidding for that.

Arun Shourie: Only after the unified licensing regime is introduced, please don't forget that phrase. But the unified licensing regime has not been introduced till today.

Sunil Jain: Let us assume for the sake of argument that BJP did everything wrong and was favouring people. Of the licences issued, you issued only some of them, the rest were all issued by the Congress minister. In 2005, the Congress came out with some new guidelines for what the prices should be for UASL. Would this be your answer to Sibal that if you assume we were wrong, in 2005 December when you issued new guidelines, why did you stick to the Rs 1,651 crore price?

Arun Shourie: That is a good argument which I shall remember. But you have to look at the growth in tele-density--that is what determines whether the 2001 price is justifiable or not. Between 2001 and 2003 there had hardly been any improvement in tele-density, but if you use the same price in 2009, then obviously that is wrong when tele-density has increased to 48 per cent. The point about Raja is that he followed no principle, no policy.

First-come-first-served was never the only criteria. When Raja said first-come-first- served, there were 539 existing applications. In a first-come-first-serve situation, those should be processed first. But he didn't process them. He contacted the real estate companies and said bring in your applications with a cut-off date of October 1. Four months later, he made September 25 the cut off date. A large number of applications were removed but not the ones he wanted to favour. Then he changed the basis of the first-come-first-serve process. He changed it from the date and time of receipt of application to the date and time on which letters of intent conditions are fulfilled and paid. That means you must bring Rs 1,651 crore, as CAG says, in 41 minutes. After that, he was still not able to give Swan Telecom the amount of spectrum which he had contracted for and so he changed the priority list in circles which are very lucrative today, like Punjab and Maharashtra and this was the first-come-first-served process. So to say that I am following Arun Shourie’s footsteps is wrong. I have said this many times--Raja, stop following my footsteps, follow my advice. My advice is turn an approver. Even your leader Mr. Karunanidhi has said one man could not have made so much money all by himself, so tell us who are the other persons.

Rishi Raj: The Prime Minister’s silence has been an issue. The Cabinet decision of 2003 said that finance ministry should always be involved in pricing of spectrum. So when Raja did not listen to the finance ministry as well as the law ministry for auction, the two ministries could have independently approached the Cabinet on the matter, which they did not do. How do you view this?

Arun Shourie: That shows the character of the government today. Chidambaram wrote a letter and there are several letters on record written by Subbarao--who's now the RBI Governor, but was then the Finance Secretary--saying don’t do this. By contrast, I discussed every single matter with Jaswant Singh, Finance Minister then and head of the Group of Ministers which considered the TRAI recommendations. More than that, the finance ministry is institutionally represented by the member finance in the Telecom Commission. In Raja’s time, the member finance got so disgusted with Raja’s illegalities that she sought premature retirement. It is my personal knowledge that Prime Minister had called Nripendra Misra, who succeeded Pradeep Baijal as the chairman of TRAI, to brief him. He said that Raja had claimed he was following TRAI recommendations, was that the case or not?

Nripendra Misra said no, he was not. Then Pranab Mukherjee called him and Nripendra Misra told him the same thing. Nripendra Misra came to me after a few months and said this is what they have called me for, what should I do.

I said please put it on record, files last a long time. So Prime Ministerknows from Nripendra Misra, from the press, he knows of the violations reported by every operator. He himself writes a letter saying that complaints that are coming in, please consider a transparent procedure for auctioning the spectrum. As I have mentioned, Sibal is the advocate of Raja and not of the government. Each time he defends Raja, he implicates the Prime Minister.

There were two persons who were handling affairs for Raja, one was Chandolia (Raja's private secretary) and there was another person. Raja was cruel to this other person, he fell out, he sought transfer from the department, started giving out information, none of the journalists wouldtake it. He was receiving threats, lures of money but he was the hero of the entire situation, he kept giving out information. In August-September 2009, I met the PM outside the Rajya Sabha. I told him that ‘under the umbrella of your good name loot is going on’. I showed him a list of the front companies and what Raja was doing. I told him about this person and that he was ready to give the entire evidence on record. I asked if I could meet Principal Secretary TKA Nair. Then I could give him all these papers and CBI or someone could investigate. I waited for one month but there was no call. I then contacted Ashwini Kumar, Director, CBI. I gave him all the papers and said, there is this man and here is his telephone number, he will give you all the evidence. CBI contacted him and had a series of meetings with him. Nothing happened so I asked the CBI what happened and they said, `Sir your man knows everything, we have followed up, everything is ready but we have to wait for a nod of the Prime Minister'. Nothing happened and nothing was going to happen. Then this meteor of CAG fell and Raja was indefensible. All the companies of Raja that have been raided are in the list that was given to the CBI at that time. It turned out to be absolutely correct. The rapidity with which they are able to move right now is precisely because they knew everything already. The Prime Minister has to be encouraged to be a good man, a good man means who enforces goodness in the circles which are under you. In this case, everything shows that Prime Minister knew and did nothing.

Shekhar Gupta: Does the CBI have sufficient evidence to convict people?

Arun Shourie: Yes. I had been told that in one set of transactions, they have been able to track the money trail. I would not be surprised if some of those persons--not just Raja and his advocate Kapil Sibal--are also deflecting attention to a JPC, and other matters. They don’t want the prosecution to proceed.

Shefalee Vasudev: Everything seems to be falling apart--civil society and the state. If you had to start a clean-up process, would you start with judicial reforms?

Arun Shourie: When such situations arise, think of Gandhiji’s phrase: anything, anyone, anywhere, anytime. We should not think of just judicial reforms, police reforms or qualifications for legislators. Many people are now feeling that the situation is ripe for another people’s movement. Political parties feel they don’t have the credibility at the moment, they have to find some non-political faces to start the process. You can guess the names they are gravitating towards--APJ Abul Kalam is one and three former chief justices of India. People feel the situation is ripening for a people's movement--the government is being buffeted, it will continue to flounder.

Ravish Tiwari: The Opposition today is looking for a protagonist. The BJP is going through a power game within its own ranks. There is no protagonist like VP Singh in 1989. What is the remedy?

Arun Shourie: I don’t want to comment on the BJP. But sometimes, erratic things throw up protagonists. I am not saying this is going to happen. It is a very different public today and a very different country where money-making is accepted and looked up to. People have got accustomed to these things. So I am not saying this is the solution. But from random situations, protagonists do rise. For instance, who thought that Mohamed ElBaradei would become the focal point of a people’s movement in Egypt? However, mass movements, even if ignited, can remove but cannot construct. Construction requires a much longer effort.

Soma Das: A few days ago, you said that Pranab Mukherjee is one of the best PMs we are yet to have.

Arun Shourie: He is certainly one person who has goodwill across the political spectrum. He is certainly mature, I don’t know about other things. Many persons are seeing a window of opportunity for themselves between Mr. Manmohan Singh demitting office and Rahul Gandhi not being ready, so ‘kisika bhi number aa sakta hai.’

Shekhar Gupta: Has the CBI been in touch with you?

Arun Shourie: I had rung up Mr. A P Singh, the CBI Director, about two months ago, saying that now that you are questioning former officials like Pradip Baijal and Vinod Vaish, I am sure you would want to question me, so I will come any day. The date has been fixed for February 21.

Shekhar Gupta: Is it your instinctive sense that whatever the CBI is doing is right?

Arun Shourie: They are absolutely on the right track. The reason is twofold: the monitoring by the Supreme Court and second, it is not difficult to be on track when public pressure is so intense. Supreme Court must continue to monitor it like a hawk and public pressure must continue. We must never forget that this is just the first stage, even the investigation is not over. After that the trials will start, appeals will be made, etc. So this requires perseverance.

Amitabh Sinha: Jairam Ramesh has been taking your name in the Lavasa controversy. You live in Lavasa, can you tell us what you think of the case?

Arun Shourie: For reasons that do not have to do so much with the merits of this case, Jairam has taken an extreme position. I had sent him an email in this regard saying, please don’t think of ‘either-or’ but ‘and-also’. Secondly, if the state of India gives clearance to POSCO or Vedanta, and they spend time and money and then, seven years later, you say stop the work, it brings the Indian state into question. In the case of Lavasa, I can tell you, the developers are thinking in terms of a model, they are aiming for international recognition. So they are having bio-mimicry workshops, plantation workshops and hydro-seeding and they take great pride in that. Sitting in Delhi we can’t realise what happens but there were 8,000 workers there, mostly from Bihar with their families and little children and suddenly no work. Many of the local people had opened vegetable shops, milk stalls--all closed. The real issue is that there should be some norms. I am told Jairam will give the clearance on February 14 for the first stage of Lavasa, so I hope that happens.

Ravish Tiwari: In the name of social expenditure, we are spending Rs 30,000 crore on NGREGS while the allocation for rural roads is only Rs 10,000 crore in the budget. Similarly, you are coming out with food security rather than creating infrastructure for storage. So how are these things going to play out for the future of the country?

Arun Shourie: Only educated people who are not going to stand for elections can oppose this. Schemes like NREGS are like throwing money out of the window. Unless delivery measures are improved, all these populist measures are going to boomerang. I opposed this at that time to the great discomfiture of the masters in BJP. Populist measures are a main cause of the current inflation. People like Yashwant Sinha, who work in their constituencies, will tell you this is nothing but centralised corruption.

Ravish Tiwari: Has India lost its story?

Arun Shourie: In America, you are getting just one per cent interest, here it is 8.5-9 per cent. That is why FII money is still coming in. I meet investors all the time, and they are all now expressing concern. They say that the long-term Indian growth story remains but we are all living for the short-term and what about that?

Transcribed by Smita Aggarwal & Sweta Dutta

For the longer version, visit www.indianexpress.com

'BJP and Congress are one party' : Arun Shourie

Source: Rediff

Arun Shourie discusses the real meaning of the Radia tapes with Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt Arun Shourie is a former newspaper editor, twice a member of the Rajya Sabha, a former Union minister, right-wing thinker and author of 25 books.
He is currently working on this 26th book at the Lavasa complex near Pune, an attempt to understand human suffering through various religions.

Despite the spiritual thrust of his latest book, Shourie, 69, keeps a sharp eye on New Delhi [ Images ].
Here he takes readers through the minefields of the 2G spectrum scam and the Niira Radia tapes and explains how the political milieu in New Delhi has reached the tipping point.
The first of a two-part conversation:
How can we make sense of what is happening in New Delhi after the expose of the 2G spectrum scandal and the release of the Niira Radia tapes?
What's the bigger message that comes out of Radia's conversations?
This shows the extent of corporate penetration into government, into the media and into details of policy making.
The main point that emerges from the tapes is the level of corporate penetration. These tapes have shown that everybody is now linked to everybody else.
Democracy survives on counter-rallying power. It survives when there are alternate sources of authority. But now those have joined hands. There is, what my friend (Union Urban Development Minister S) Jaipal Reddy has once called, an invisible government of India [ Images ] which is completely stable.
The visible Government of India keeps changing, but that invisible government of India remains completely stable.
That is the real danger because now the Opposition is no different from the ruling party, whichever is the ruling party. The influence of those puppeteers behind the scene works on both sides. As a result, no issue is pursued to conclusion.
Is the 2G issue a new one? No. It is two years old. I know how I have taken documents to editors, to senior people in government. How can it be that only one reporter in one newspaper The Pioneer was following it? He was not withholding information, but not one newspaper or television channel touched it.
Today also the reportage is about what (former telecom minister) A Raja says, what Arun Shourie says. Is that the end of the story? I hardly read newspapers now. I just don't watch television. There is nothing to be learnt.
Why are journalists going for sound bytes? Why don't they take the documents home, study it and come to their own conclusions? I can't understand.
I feel completely distanced from this profession (journalism) and, of course, politicians. They are in bed with each other and with everybody.
Don't you think the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party [ Images ]) also has a lot to answer for in the current situation?
I don't see the difference between the two. I feel they (the BJP and the Congress) are one party. They are jointly ruling. It is a dinner party. They meet at dinners. They meet socially. They decide on what has to be done about issues.
It is all very cooperative behaviour. They (the BJP) are shouting (for a Joint Parliamentary Committee). They know that it will kill the investigation.
A JPC will raise side issues and that is what both sides want. Because the corporates behind both sides are the same. They don't want the 2G spectrum investigation to proceed.
If you see the bigger picture of 2G spectrum, it is a battle between the old operators and the new operators in telecom...
But that's the separate issue...
It was during the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government led by the BJP that (then Union minister) Ananth Kumar introduced Niira Radia to the New Delhi set-up.
Yes, that's one point. I remember there was a report in that regard in the Indian Express which had an eight column front-page story just below the masthead. The story was about Ananth Kumar and Niira Radia's association with each other. I don't recollect if Annath Kumar was then the civil aviation or tourism minister.
I was astonished to read that such person has been named in the report. I was told by a very senior official about the observations made by some agency. He was in a position to know about the minister. He told me that the report about Ananth Kumar and Radia's association is correct and that is why no action was taken against the published report.
See, issues are not taken up in New Delhi by anybody. The political parties and corporates have complete liaison with the media. Its not just Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, it is the whole lot involved with each other.
That's why political parties are not taking up the issue of the Radia tapes. The cpi-m (Communist Party of India-Marxist) shouted about the tapes, but the next day the story came that West Bengal [ Images ] Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya [ Images ] was dealing with Radia for the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.
Now can the CPI-M [ Images ] shout 'crony capitalism' in the same way?
The problem is the homogenisation of India's political parties. All are becoming clones of each other. That means there is no counter-wheeling power any longer in the country.
Do you accept the argument of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's [ Images ] supporters and Congress leaders that there are limitations to a coalition government?
Also, a Congress leader claimed that you can't ask the government to abdicate the duty to govern by taking action under pressure.
Why have they taken action now? Has the coalition fallen? No. These arguments are not right.
The prime minister of India has unlimited power. Our system is so structured that the PM knows everything.
Yashwant Sinha [ Images ], when he was finance minister, told me an incident. He got a message from a leader of the state that s/he wanted to see him. He asked Prime Minister (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee if he could can meet that person. Vajpayee said he could meet her/him.
When Sinha went to the state he met the particular leader without anyone knowing about it. He had lunch and talked about all sorts of things. At the end of it, the leader gave him an envelope. He kept it in his pocket. He came to New Delhi and only then opened it.
It was a legal brief on why cases against that leader should not be pursued by the Enforcement Directorate. He put the envelope in his drawer and did nothing about it. He forgot the case.
Several days later he met Vajpayee and spoke about his meeting with the state leader. Vajpayee listened quietly and kept looking at him. At the end of the meeting he asked Sinha, 'Aur woh lifafa (what about the envelope)?'
Sinha was astonished since he had told no one about the meeting and he did not act on what was requested.
Unless the prime minister deliberately shuts his eyes there is no difficulty in knowing everything. It would be incredible that the prime minister would not know. The system is so structured.
Second, all the telecom dealings were done in public. The Prime Minister's Office would certainly read the newspapers. There was so much commotion in Sanchar Bhuvan that people were beaten up the day the allotment of 2G spectrum was announced.
The point is that the prime minister himself wrote a letter and as politely as possible gave instructions that please examine the issue of auctioning of spectrum and determining its price in a fair and transparent manner.
And his minister disregards that.
Do you think that the PM would not know that?
It was the letter signed by him that was ignored.
Coalition dharma doesn't mean that I will become protector of the corrupt.
I feel the prime minister must have known about the 2G issue. That's evident from all sorts of facts.
Second, coalition compulsions do not give you the licence to abdicate your duty.
If your minister is doing something wrong, as captain of the team, the prime minister owes the responsibility to the country to stop the minister.
If the PM had confronted (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam [ Images ] chief M) Karunanidhi with all the evidence, I don't imagine he would have told the PM, 'Don't take action against Raja'.
It is possible that the Congress party must have prevailed over the PMO in that matter.
I don't know. I have heard the opposite. Six months ago, the Congress party had told the prime minister that you remove Raja and it is your responsibility to explain this matter to Karunanidhi. That is what senior leaders of the party have been saying.
I don't know the inner party politics of the Congress. But your point of view or mine is immaterial.
The material fact is that nothing was done. People are asking, 'Raja ke khilaf karwai kyon nahi ki? (Why was action not taken against Raja?)'

Demand for a JPC into 2G is not right. There was a JPC on Bofors, what happened? ARUN SHOURIE

Demand for a JPC into 2G is not right. There was a JPC on Bofors, what happened?

ARUN SHOURIE BJP leader and former telecom minister

Source: Indian Express

In this Walk the Talk on NDTV 24x7 with The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, Arun Shourie, telecom minister in the NDA government, takes on A Raja for saying he was only following the first-come-first-served policy of granting licences that was laid down by his predecessors ALL OF us wish that the Prime Minister would exercise his authority more.


Otherwise what is happening is what happened in Raja's case, that under the umbrella of the Prime Minister's good name, all this dacoity was going on. It is not a service to the country for a good person to be merely a good person in his own right



My guest this week is somebody who I say with great pride that I followed in the footsteps of, Mr Arun Shourie. But it seems that you are in tricky company because A Raja also says that he followed in your footsteps as telecom minister.

This kind of nonsense that (Raja) was peddling--that he was only continuing the principles and procedures that we had laid down-this has certainly not washed with the Prime Minister.

Or with the CBI or CAG.

It is also very curious that on the one hand you force him to resign, saying he has done wrong. On the other, you say he is only following procedures. But I have faith that if the media is strong, the courts are strong, one way or the other the truth will come out, as it has come out in this case.

What is the truth in this case?

Was he following in your footsteps or not? And what were your footsteps?

I will give you one instance. He says I followed the first-come-firstserved procedure and he did the same thing and the media is saying the same thing. The fact of the matter is that he did not follow the first-come-first-served method. All this controversy relates to Sep tember-October 2007. In August 2007, there were 167 applications lying in the telecom department and he was not allowing them to be processed, saying the spectrum is short. And then suddenly, he contacts the real estate companies that he was dealing with while he was in the environment ministry (he was environment minister in UPA-I) and tells them, `We are opening shop here. You come and take licences.' They apply. Suddenly he now has spectrum. He announces he will give licence on first-come-first-served basis by the date and time of application re ceived--by October 1, 2007. Ap plications come. Suddenly he says no. I will have the cut-off date not on October 1 but September 25. So everybody who applies in be tween is cut out, without any rea son, without any scrutiny. This is what (D S) Mathur, the secretary, objected to. Then he suddenly changed the basis of first-come first-served. First it was time and date of application. Then he says the time and date at which the con ditions specified in the letter of intent will be fulfilled. This is changed, and one of the condi tions is, as the CAG says, in 41 minutes, bring banker's drafts. It's a press note issued at 2.45 p.m. that by 3.30 p.m., bring a banker's draft of Rs 1,650 crore.

I must say Indian banking system has become very efficient! Electronic. Not only that. It so happens that some firms already have the banker's drafts precisely for that time and it is dated well before the change of conditions that was announced. And the representatives of two of the firms are sitting in the office of Raja's personal assistant. They are not at the central registry where these are to be given. So, suddenly these licences are given. Even this change is not notified till January 2008. All this is happening in October. Then there are conditions which are laid down. Now the CAG has found that of the 122 licences that were given, in the case of 85 licences, those companies did not fulfill the conditions that had been laid down--that is first come, first served. Not only that, it then happened that (Raja) still did not get the type of spectrum allocated to Swan, which he wanted to do, which is one of the favoured companies. So he changes the priority list into lucrative circles--Punjab and Maharashtra--that is first come, first served. One change after the other so as to steer the licences entirely to the companies he was favouring.

Do you get a sense that the CBI knows exactly what has happened?

I have no doubt about it because in some cases the very officers who were handling the material, who were handling these manipulations, have testified to the CBI.

That is to my personal knowledge, because the officers have told me what they have told the CBI. And if I may so, I have conveyed this even before, from the CBI to the higher persons in the gov ernment. Nothing happened.

This govern ment?

The UPA govern ment. The CBI, therefore, knows to such an extent that the officer sir, these compa has said, `Yes sir, these companies' representatives would bring the note which he should sign on a pen drive. It would be put into my computer, a print taken and Raja would sign it.' This detail the CBI knows. CBI knows the identity of the front companies that were used.

The front companies were used to get licences or transfer bribes?

Licences, of course, are well known.

And front companies for money transactions?

Yes, transactions.

Bribe transactions?

I would have no doubt otherwise; you are not doing charity here.

The CBI knows the identity of the critical person who handled the money and it is a mystery to the other officers as to why that particular officer has not been questioned to this day.

He has still not been questioned?

He has still not been questioned.

And if they talk to him now, he might tell them the truth?

I think so. These people are quite ambitious themselves. They just don't do things for their masters.

The CBI's thing is that we have to take the government's permission because he is of such and such rank. But what is the problem?

You go and take the permission and if the government refuses, then that itself will prove the point.

So would you think that if CBI were to ask for permission to go and prosecute this particular officer or officers of that rank, the government wouldn't even dare to deny them permission?

I don't think so. I don't think it's a question of daring. I think now it's a question of slight anger also.

The government is angry?

I think so. I will tell you why.

What happened was there were fisticuffs in Sanchar Bhavan, because these applications had to be given to the Central Registry. To keep the others from giving the applications, musclemen were employed and they were beaten up and there was a lot of scuffle. That very day, the Prime Minister writes to Raja, saying adopt these proce dures and so on and in the end he says, `please examine the question of auctioning the spectrum and determining its price in a fair and transparent manner'.

The Prime Minister himself writes to him?

Yes, he himself writes to him. And what does Raja do? In a letter drafted by a person whom the CBI knows about--Raja can't draft that letter--Raja then implicates Pranab Mukherjee in the thing that `I have kept honourable senior minister Pranab Mukherjee fully informed'. So naturally Mr Pranab Mukherjee would have been incensed.

But Mr Pranab Mukherjee is not a fool. He is a very competent minister.

Absolutely. He is the keystone of not just the government today but of the whole political structure.

Absolutely. He has got goodwill across all sides and respect.

(He is) a very seasoned and mature person and he would not be condoning any of this nonsense.

The second thing that happens is that in the affidavit which was filed by the department of telecom in Raja's defence, it's not Pranab Mukherjee but the Prime Minister who has been implicated. It says, `I kept the Prime Minister informed of all this.' But this is an amazing government that a ministry can file an affidavit in such a controversial case implicating the Prime Minister?

I am actually astonished, because there is a thing called the transaction of business rules. It provides that if there is a matter which involves different ministries, then you must consult them. Secondly, if there is a disagreement, then collective deliberation must be exercised and the decision will be taken by the Cabinet or by the group of ministers as authorised.

In this case, it was a matter of great controversy, not just the affidavit, but even on the auctioning, nonauctioning of spectrum, methods of allocation of licences and to his great credit, Chidambaram as Finance Minister repeatedly insisted on spectrum auctioning. The Law Minister, Mr Bhardwaj, wrote that given the implications of this particular matter, a group of ministers should be set up.

Even Mr Bhardwaj?

But you see, you have to give credit to the person. He took a firm stand, a clear stand on this.

No, I said Mr Bhardwaj because you would expect political flexibility from him--ally ko accommodate karna hai.

Could be, but in this case, he took a clear line under the rules of business, under the transaction of business rules, and Raja completely disregards that. So not just the affidavit, I think they had filed it on their own without consultation with the other departments which are implicated. And certainly the Prime Minister, I would be surprised. I would be surprised on both counts. If the Prime Minister did not know, then it would be a very surprising thing.

You think normally the Prime Minister would have known, since you have been inside the system? You know prime ministers have a way of knowing what's going on.

Yes, there is a delicious incident.

Yashwant Sinha told me that you must remember prime ministers know everything under our system.

And he narrates that when he was finance minister, he got a message from the leader of a state, saying, `please meet me'. Mr Sinha mentioned it to Prime Minister Mr Vajpayee. A month or two later, there was a lunch. Nobody knew about it.

He (Sinha) had gone in an unmarked car. Lunch was over and this person handed him an envelope at the end of the lunch. Sinha put it in his pocket, came back and when he opened it, it was about some cases the person was involved in or the others were involved in and these were arguments as to why these cases do not merit consideration. So when he met Mr Vajpayee, he told him `unhone yeh kaha, maine yeh kaha'. Atalji kept listening, and then said, "aur woh lifafa (and that envelope)?" Sinha said he had not mentioned the lifafa. He had forgotten about it, but the Prime Minister knew. And he narrates several such instances.

But now you think the Prime Minister had also had it?

Yes, I think there is such brazenness in this and the CAG's report is quite well-documented and apart from the CAG, the facts are there.

And he is not just implicating Arun Shourie or Pramod Mahajan--we are nobody, but Pranab Mukherjee one day, the Prime Minister one day.

Only Sonia Gandhi is left?

Sonia Gandhi se to darna padta hai.

Raja talks about following firstcome first-served. But he says he (Shourie) also followed an old price discovered spectrum and I also did that.

In 2001, tele-density in India was 3.8 per cent of the population. Today, it is nearly 50 per cent. At that time, spectrum was not short. Mobile telephony had just come. To encourage that, there was a policy.

The whole sector had collapsed because of the fixed licence fee. So there was a transition to 1999.

Okay, you don't pay the fixed fee, you pay a share of the revenue. It saved the sector and led to growth.

At that time, that price was discovered. In 2003, if you look at the figures, there was hardly any growth, 3.8 went to about 5 per cent (teledensity). Now, when you have this enormous growth, to say that this asset costs only that much, and a very interesting point also, the licences which were given were not being used in some parts of the country, northeast, I think Orissa or West Bengal, one of the eastern states and Kashmir also. So we said, we should move towards auctioning. We should separate licencing from spectrum. In the meantime, don't hold up this process, go with the 2001 price. All this was done not by me alone, but by the group of ministers, by the cabinet.

But he says that I have raised so much money from my 3G auction, nobody has done it.

Because he has been forced to auction it, otherwise he would have done the 2G thing again in 3G.

And that's when Pranab Mukherjee took charge.

He had to. In the terms of reference of the group of ministers, the pricing of spectrum was included and Raja insisted this should be taken out. And somehow it was taken out and it could not have been done under our system without the knowledge of the Prime Minister. Of course, the Prime Minister has many other big things to do and was maybe not paying any attention to this but this is the kind of thing Raja's people will now argue in court.

How good is the CBI? How good is our system for catching this?

The CBI is quite competent to do these things, but unfortunately it has lost the will to do it, because it has been manipulated by politicians.

Why is your party insisting on JPC? Is that a better way of doing it?

With great respect to the Opposition, I think this is not the right demand at all. There was a JPC on Harshad Mehta, what happened?

Nothing. Bofors, nothing happened.

Pardon me for being cynical.

Look at the BJP. Look at the state governments the BJP is running. Look at Jharkhand, look at Karnataka, they are among two of the most corrupt governments in India.

Well, there is a great homogenisation of political parties. I think that's a great problem. If you go to Karnataka today and say what does X or Y party stand for, they stand for the same things. So, one should differentiate oneself by one's conduct. I believe idealism is the practical politics today.

So you think overall, the action taken in the Raja case is a cause for some cheer?

Yes, I think in three-four cases-in Adarsh Society, in Raja's case, in the Commowealth Games.

Once again, a good beginning, but we must once begin and then persevere. I am delighted that action has been taken. All of us wish that the Prime Minister would exercise his authority more. Otherwise what is happening is what happened in Raja's case, that under the umbrella of the Prime Minister's good name, all this dacoity was going on. It is not a service to the country for a good person to be merely a good person in his own right.

Arun, always a privilege to share a walk the talk with you and a much bigger privilege to walk in your steps.



Transcribed by Sutirtha Sanyal