Court seeks Trai report on 'no loss to exchequer'

The trial court in the 2G spectrum scam on Tuesday asked the central bureau of investigation to place on record the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) recent report on the controversial allocations.

The Trai report, given to CBI last month, stated there was no loss to the exchequer during the 2008 allocation .

The court issued this notice in response to a petition filed by former telecom minister and 2G scam accused A Raja and DB Realty's Shahid Balwa. The hearing on the matter will take place on September 9.

Trai’s submission to CBI states it did not recommend the auction of spectrum. The submission could weaken the theory of loss caused to the exchequer because of opting for first-come-first-serve licence allocation, rather than the auction route.

Raja's counsel Ramesh Gupta told the court that the probe agency had “no scientific or technical expertise” to determine the loss. “In fact, the CBI has itself made an admission in the chargesheet that the Trai report is awaited for calculating the quantum of loss,” his petition said.

Trai report mentions that it is not possible to quantify the loss caused by the allotment of licences in 2008.

The Comptroller and Auditor General had assessed a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh-crore to the state exchequer, while the CBI, during its probe into the 2G scam, had pegged the loss at Rs 30,000 crore.

CBI officials, however, argued that the case against Raja is that he twisted the first come first serve policy to benefit certain private parties.

Raja, while presenting his arguments, had challenged the loss figures derived by the CAG and the CBI. He had also said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then finance minister P Chidambaram were fully in the know of the policy decisions being made for the spectrum allocation.

Trai, in its submission, told the CBI that spectrum should not be treated as government revenue. It also said the regulator recommended against both auctioning of radio waves and revising entry fee for telecom firms.

On September 15, the special CBI court will pass the order on the charges to be framed against all the accused. The court was hearing the bail pleas of Unitech's Sanjay Chandra and Vinod Goenka. The Supreme Court too has asked the CBI to submit the Trai report which says that there has been no loss to the exchequer in the allotment of the 2G spectrum during Raja's tenure.