CBI witness and former Deputy Director General (AS) A K Srivastava in the Department of Telecom said he himself had not issued the press release about the policy of first-come- first-served (FCFS) to be followed in the grant of Unified Access Services (UAS) licences.
The agency, in its charge sheet, has said that before the press release was issued, key accused and former Telecom Minister A Raja had fraudulently portrayed that the amended draft of Letters of Intent (LoI) had the consent of the then solicitor general.
Srivastava had earlier told the court that as per the amended press release on the FCFS policy for UAS licences, whosoever complied with the LoI conditions first was to be granted the licence first.
He had also said under the earlier FCFS policy, the application which was received first, was processed first and if found eligible, was given the LoI. The licence was given to the applicant who complied with the LoI conditions.
During his cross-examination, Srivastava told Special CBI Judge O P Saini, that he had not recorded the inconsistencies between the press release of January 10, 2008 and his note of January 7, 2008 as he was not given the file by Behura who had asked him to "immediately" issue the press release which was approved by Raja.
"In the early morning of January 10, 2008, when the approved copy of press release was given to me by secretary (T), I was asked to issue it immediately and hand over to him (Behura) a duly issued copy of the press release.
"I was not given the file and that is why I did not process it on the file, but orally informed Siddharth Behura about the inconsistencies before he noted in the file that the amended press release has been released," he said. (More)