Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS) The Supreme Court was told Wednesday by an accused in the 2G case that advancing the cut-off date for the receipt of applications for licences and spectrum was not a clandestine decision but was taken as there was a glut of applications and there was not sufficient airwaves for all of them.

Assailing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case that the cut-off date was advanced to benefit Unitech, senior counsel Ram Jethmalani told an apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice H.L. Dattu that there was no evidence to support this.

He said there was no evidence that his client, Unitech’s Sanjay Chandra, met A. Raja, the then communications minister, and also there could not be any judicial review of the government policy.

“I am a consumer (as service provider) and I am entitled to take advantage of (government) policy. No government policy was subject to judicial review,” Jethmalani told the court.

It may be recalled that DoT (department of communication) on Sep 25, 2007 said that it would accept application for allocation of 2G licence and spectrum up to Oct 1, 2007. But on Jan 10, 2008 the DoT said that only those whose applications were received till Sep 25 would be considered for the grant of 2G licence and spectrum. Thus, a large number of applications received after Sep 25 were not considered.

Seeking bail for Chandra, Jethmalani told the court that both the then deputy director general of department of telecommunication A.K. Srivastava and the then communications minister A. Raja were on the same side on the issue of advancing the cut-off date but Srivastava was later made a prosecution witness who has been relied upon against me (Chandra).

The court was told that between Nov 29, 2009, and Jan 17, 2011, Srivastava gave six statements to the investigating agency and not once he said anything corroborating the CBI case that Chandra had colluded with Raja and officials to take undue advantage and cause huge loss to the exchequer.

He said that Srivastava gave a statement corroborating the allegation of collusion in his seventh statement to the investigating agency March 4.

Jethmalani said that Srivastava made a statement corroborating the CBI version only after he was indicted by a probe committee and the investigating agency then made an “unpardonable accomplice into a witness”.

Senior counsel told the court that Unitech made its first application Sep 21 but it was returned because it was not in duplicate.

If Chandra was such a favourite of the then minister Raja and other top officials of the DoT then his application would not have been returned on a “highly technical” ground, he said.