The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has told the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) inquiring into the second-generation (2G) telecom spectrum controversy that it had collected around 100,000 pages of documents and files during its investigation.
It also analysed recordings of around 5,800 intercepted calls for Niira Radia, the corporate lobbyist at the centre of a lot of the controversy.
A CBI official said the general scrutiny of documents was completed in June-July last year, well before the Supreme Court decided to monitor the investigation through an order issued on September 16. There was no delay at all in the probe.
It has told the JPC that 59 files of the department of telecom’s access services cell deal with the policy issues relating to grant of the Unified Access Service Licence (UASL). These include the processing of 122 UASL applications of the 17 companies to whom these licences were issued during January-March 2008 and files regarding grant of UAS licences to these companies.
Files pertaining to the planning, coordination, availability and allocation of spectrum to the new allottees during the relevant period had also been seized. Searches were also carried out at the office premises of Swan Telecom, DataCom Solutions, Idea Cellular, Unitech Wireless group of companies, Spice Communications, Tata Teleservices, S Tel, Loop Telecom, Shyam Telelink and Allianz Infratech. These companies were allotted UASLs without any competitive bidding, CBI added.
CBI also informed JPC that the investigation involved analysis of the issues relating to telecom policy in earlier governments, too.
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This was done since officials said the first come, first served policy for issuance of licences, at the prices discovered in 2001, was in vogue since 2003. For this purpose, records of the access services cell and wireless planning and coordination wing, plus those of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, were analysed.
It says it is yet to examine the background of issuance of the UASL guidelines of December 14, 2005.