Not PM but his key officers culpable, says judge

The trial court verdict in the ‘telecom scam’, acquitting everyone indicted, had said then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was not properly briefed by T K A N air, and Pulok Chatterjee, two top officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Judge O P Saini’s observation, however, vindicates tainted telecom minister A Raja’s stand that the latter had written to Singh before a letter of intent was issued to companies which had applied for spectrum in September 2007 . The court says the PM had asked Nair and Chatterjee to examine Raja’s letter and prepare a note.

“The file was placed before the PM on Jan 7, 2008. It is not clear from the record if this note was seen by (Singh) or not. However, it is clear somebody from the Prime Minister’s Office had given a go-ahead to the department of telecommunications (DoT) for issue of new licences and, most probably, it was Pulok Chatterjee himself, as his note records that he had spoken to secretary (telecom),” Saini noted in his 1,522-page judgment.

“Thereafter only on the same day, the process of issue of Letters of Intent (LOIs) started with the recording of notes by Nitin Jain and A K Srivastava. Had the PMO hinted otherwise, DoT would not have dared to go ahead with the process of issue of LOIs, as secretary (telecom) only joined on January 1, 2008 and was quite new in his job. He (Siddhartha Behura) would not have dared to go against the PMO,” the judge observed.

Raja first informed the then PM on November 2, 2007, about the cut-off date of inviting applications for licences. He told Singh the DoT had decided to issue LOIs to those who had applied on September 25, 2007.

Singh then wrote to Raja that the licences needed to be allocated in a transparent manner. Raja wrote to Singh on December 26, 2007, that he was following the earlier policy of “first come, first served” basis. Saini says Singh then directed Nair “to examine the same urgently”.