Court criticises DoT's conduct in 2G spectrum case

A special court today criticised the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) over its submission that it was cheated by promoters of Essar Group and Loop Telecom Ltd by fraudulently obtaining 2G spectrum licences, saying the DoT was playing "victim".
Questioning the conduct of the DoT, it said if the department felt that the spirit of clause 8 of 2005 Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) guidelines was being violated by means of "excessive debt funding" by one licensee company to another, then it was free to amend its guidelines.
According to the Clause 8 of the UASL guidelines, "No single company/legal person, either directly or through associates, shall have substantial equity holding in more than one licensee company in the same service area for Access Services namely; Basic, Cellular and Unified Access Service."

Special Court Judge O P Saini said the DoT was playing victim and did not take appropriate administrative action.
"There is no material on record that DoT took any steps to do any of these things. Instead of course correction by taking appropriate administrative action, the DoT started playing victim claiming that it has been cheated by Loop Telecom Limited as it was indebted heavily to a group, which already had more than 10 per cent equity in an existing pan India licensee, i.e, Vodafone Essar Limited," the judge said.
Referring to the deposition of a DoT official as a prosecution witness, the court noted that a complaint was earlier received by the department which was not taken seriously on the ground that it might be frivolous.

"Accordingly, DoT went ahead with the signing of the licence agreements. Thus, DoT itself did not take the complaint very seriously. The deposition of A K Srivastava (DoT official) alone is good enough to knock out the case of the prosecution," it said.
The court said that the DoT knew about the allegations in the complaint in advance, but "started wallowing into victimhood at the instance of CBI".