Raja wants PM to take the witness box

Former telecom minister A Raja who is in jail in connection with the 2G spectrum scam, yesterday told a Delhi court that he would get prime minister Manmohan Singh, then finance minister P Chidambaram and present telecom minister Kapil Sibal summoned as witnesses to prove government did not incur any loss in the 2G allocation.

Senor advocate Sushil Kumar, appearing for Raja told special CBI judge OP Saini that Raja wanted to state that he would get the prime minister, the then finance minister and the present telecom minister summoned as witnesses. 

He added that once it was established that there had been no loss to the state exchequer, the whole case of cheating and conspiracy in the spectrum allocation would go. He said that the prime minister and the two other ministers would be able to establish that.

He said Raja would seek certain documents from the CBI which had so far not been placed before the court.

Raising the issue of offloading of equity by Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd and Unitech (Tamil Nadu) Wireless Pvt Ltd to Dubai-based Etisalat and Norway-based Telenor respectively, the defence counsel said that there was no criminality involved in those transactions.

"First of all there was no sale of licences, then the offloading of equities was within the limit of 74%. Moreover, the transactions were cleared at the highest level (the Foreign Investment Promotion Board)," he said.