New Delhi: Yet another prosecution witness in the 2G case told a Delhi court today that there was no prior information about the distribution of Letter of Intents (LoIs) for spectrum licences to telecom firms, undertaken on 10 January, 2008 under the supervision of erstwhile top DoT official AK Srivastava.
Department of Telecom’s Assistant Director General Bharat Lal Panwar told Special Judge OP Saini that he and three other officials were called for a meeting in the committee room of Sanchar Bhawan and were told by Srivastava that the LoIs have to be distributed for which four counters were made.
“Accordingly, MK Khatri, AK Dhar, Madan Chaurasia and myself reached the committee room, situated at second floor in the Sanchar Bhawan. We were also told to get the committee room vacated, if someone were present there.
Reuters
“Later on company representative were also called inside the committee room. Their entry was on the basis of authority letter and their attendance was also taken. They were to be distributed letters of intent. Later on, erstwhile Deputy
Director General Srivastava told us on that day that LoIs were to be distributed,” said Panwar deposing as CBI witness.
AK Dhar too had testified yesterday the he was not briefed in advance about the distribution of LoIs.
The CBI in its first charge sheet filed on 2 April, 2011 had said the “ill-conceived” design of establishing four counters to distribute LoIs to companies made a “mockery” of First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) policy which was done allegedly to benefit some companies by the then telecom minister A Raja.
“This desperate race to the reception area led to a lot chaos which also resulted in a situation that physical fitness of the representatives became the main deciding factor for the priority in submission of compliance of LoIs and entry fee etc making a mockery of the FCFS policy,” it had said in the chargesheet.
PTI
