Ashok Kumar Dhar, a retired official of the Department of Telecom (DoT), testified to the court of Special Judge R K Saini that they were not briefed in advance about the process of distribution of LoIs and A K Srivastava, the then deputy director general, was the senior most officer and the over all in-charge for the purpose.
Dhar, who deposed as CBI witness in the case said on the day when LoIs were distributed, he along with other three DoT officials was called by his senior in the committee room of Sanchar Bhawan and was told that they have to give the LoIs to the representatives of the telecom firms.
"Once all of us (DoT officials and telecom companies' representatives) assembled in the committee room, we were told the purpose of assembling in the committee room, that is, distribution of LOIs," Dhar told the court.
Dhar, who was made to sit on the second counter to distribute the LoIs, said nobody had asked him to favour or disfavour anybody.
His deposition assumes importance as the CBI in its first charge sheet filed on April 2, 2011 had said that the "ill conceived" design of establishing four counters to distribute LoIs to companies made a "mockery" of First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) policy.
"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 charge sheet. (MORE)