CBI deepens probe into NDA role in 2G scam

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has intensified its probe into role of the earlier National Democratic Alliance government in the 2G spectrum allocation scam, media reports said.

The cheap sale of radio spectrum has led to a Supreme Court order cancelling all telecom licences awarded after January 2008. This follows multiple court cases and arrests. Former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja is still behind bars.

The CBI had earlier asked the department of telecommunications (DoT) to provide the licence agreements with all telecom providers between 2001 and 2007, when the late Pramod Mahajan of the Bharatiya Janata Party was the telecom minister in the BJP-led NDA government.

The DoT in response provided the licence agreements with Bharti Telenet Ltd for its Delhi services and Aircel for Delhi and Mumbai. However, files pertaining to the DoT's agreement with Hutchison and Sterling Cellular (now Vodafone-Essar), BPL and Idea could not be traced immediately and efforts were on to locate them, reports quoted official sources as saying.

After booking former telecom ministers A Raja and Dayanidhi Maran (both of the DMK party) in two separate cases, the CBI in November last year had registered a case against former telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh, the then deputy director-general (value added services) J R Gupta, and two telecom service providers, Airtel and Vodafone, for irregularities in the grant of additional spectrum.