All roads led to Pragati Maidan in New Delhi that morning. Ratan Tata was all set to unveil the Nano, his dream project. Thousands thronged the Tata Motors pavilion. The world held its breath as Tata drove the Nano on to the stage.
“A promise is a promise,” he told 400 journalists from India and abroad. Television and the Internet were soon thick with the Nano rollout. It was a momentous event — something that happens once in a lifetime.
Around the same time, at Sanchar Bhawan, headquarters of the ministry of telecommunications and information technology, located a few kilometres from Pragati Maidan, A K Srivastava, a deputy director general in the Department of Telecommunications, or DoT, sent a note to the Press Information Bureau for dissemination. It said that DoT had decided to give letters of intent to everybody who had applied for a licence to operate telecom services on or before September 25, 2007, provided they met the eligibility criteria. “The press release has [the] approval of the honorable minister for communication and information technology [Andimuthu Raja] and may kindly be released immediately,” Srivastava noted on the release. It was uploaded at 1:47 pm.
* * *
The events of the day could be traced back to December 26, 2007, when A Raja wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that in view of the huge number of applications that had piled up (575 till October 1, 2007, the deadline fixed by DoT), the first-come, first-served rule would have to be tweaked: whoever fulfills the conditions of the letter of intent first gets the licence first (and the spectrum that comes with it). “The same has concurred [sic] by the Solicitor General,” he wrote in the letter.
It was only on January 7, 2008, that Siddharth Behura, the new telecom secretary (he had taken over on January 1), took the file to Solicitor General G E Vahanvati and asked him if there was a court stay order with regard to the issue of letters of intent. Vahanvati informed him that there was none. He was then shown a file as well as the draft of a press release. Accordingly, Vahanvati noted: “I have seen the notes. The issues regarding the new letters of intent are not before any court. What is proposed is fair and reasonable. The press release makes for transparency. This seems to be in order.” Vahanvati then handed the file back to Behura.
Raja subsequently struck out the last paragraph of the press release drafted by Behura which said: “However, if more than one applicant complies with the conditions of the letter of intent on the same date, the inter-se seniority would be decided by the date of application.” This, Raja noted in his small hand, is “not necessary as it is a new stipulation”. And then he added on the note, “press release approved as amended”.
Later on January 7, a meeting was held in Raja’s room which was attended by Behura, Member (Telecom) K Sridhar, Srivastava and R K Chandolia, Raja’s private secretary. Srivastava was handed a draft of the letter written by Raja to Prime Minister Singh on December 26. He was informed that Raja had sent the letter formally to the PM and that he would get a photocopy of the signed letter subsequently. “I was asked to adopt the communication to Prime Minister Singh as policy directive on licensing matter,” Srivastava said in his testimony to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
* * *
Srivastava was called by Behura to his office in the morning of January 10. He was handed a photocopy of the press release as amended by Raja and was asked to release it right away. By the time Srivastava reached his office, he found that the files of the applicants, too, were at his desk. He called his staff to study these files. Srivastava then gathered his team in his office to discuss the modalities for handing over the letters of intent. Just then, Chandolia walked in and said the letters of intent had to be distributed on this day itself. When Srivastava and others remonstrated, he said the orders had come from Raja.
Srivastava and others said there wasn’t enough time to inform everybody that the letters of intent would be distributed later in the day. Chandolia suggested the applicants could be informed over telephone and a press release could be put out to this effect. When Srivastava didn’t agree, he was asked to come to Behura’s office.
Behura told him that the letters of intent should be issued today itself, as desired by Raja and conveyed by Chandolia. Behura than instructed Srivastava that all applicants should be informed right away and another press release should be issued asking all of them to come to Sanchar Bhawan at 3:30 pm to collect the letters of intent.
Chandolia also suggested that the letters of intent “must be issued in a short span of time by opening four counters”. Srivastava said that he couldn’t see any logic in the proposal to set up four counters for the distribution of letters of intent. If these had to be handed out simultaneously, 14 counters were required; if these were to be given on the first-come, first-served basis, then only one counter was required. When some DoT officers resisted, Behura said he was ready to give his assent to the scheme on file. The arrangement is illustrated in the box (above right). The number in brackets represents priority according to the date of application.
Since Bycell only had to collect the rejection letter, Swan Telecom (now Etisalat DB) was effectively number one on the first counter, though it was fifth on the priority list. Similarly, since Parsvnath’s application had been rejected, Unitech Wireless jumped from the 12th slot to the second.
* * *
At 2:45 pm, DoT put out another release. It said that all applicants should assemble at the Committee Room on the second floor of Sanchar Bhawan at 3:30 pm to collect the letters of intent. All applicant companies could send only one representative carrying their official rubber stamp. The doors of the room would be closed at 4:30 pm.
Not only did all the eligible applicants read the release on the DoT website but they also managed to send their representatives on time, including those not headquartered in Delhi. All of them had assembled in the Committee Room at the appointed time. Armed guards were posted outside to enforce the “one applicant, one representative” rule. The allotment of letters of intent was completed in a short period of about 30 minutes between 3:45 pm and 4:15 pm. On receipt of the letters of intent, the representatives of these companies rushed outside immediately and did not wait for even a second.
Preparations for the Reception Room had started a day earlier, on January 9. Chandolia had asked Deputy Director General Kirthy Kumar to set up four counters in the Reception Room to check the validity of the documents the companies would furnish. Chandolia was insistent that the exact time of submission of documents should be noted clearly and unambiguously on each set of documents — that, after all, would decide the seniority for licence and spectrum. For that purpose, a digital clock was purchased from Shankar Market and installed in the Reception Room. At 3:00 pm on January 10, Kumar came to the Reception Room to check the bandobast and then took his position outside the room to ensure that the representatives came in a proper queue.
| Counter I | Counter II | Counter III | Counter IV |
| Bycell (1) | Tata Tele (2) | Idea Cellular (3) | Spice (4) |
| Swan (5) | HFCL (6) | S Tel (7) | Parsvnath (8) |
| Datacom (9) | Loop (10) | Allianz (11) | Unitech W (12) |
| Shyam (13) | Selene (14) |
The reception area had been cleared except for one person. “Venugopal Dhoot had come around 3:30 pm to 3:45 pm and displayed his Rajya Sabha identity card, posing as a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications & IT,” Kumar told CBI. “He had come to observe that the receipt of documents should happen in a transparent manner. Being a Member of Parliament, I could not evict Dhoot from the reception.” Some others said it was Rajkumar Dhoot in the reception area and that “he did not hinder, obstruct or block in any way the entry of licensees”.
The gates to the Reception Room were thrown open at 3:45 pm. One representative was allowed at a time; the next in the queue could go in only after the first had completed all formalities. Businessmen and senior executives pushed and shoved each other. Some were accompanied by bouncers so that they could move ahead of others in the queue. Mahendra Nahata of HFCL, whose application for new licences had been found invalid by DoT, was roughed up by security personnel. “Nahata of HFCL had entered the reception area without any letter of intent or any document, and was trying to hinder the smooth functioning of the process and was also indulging in a scuffle with other representatives in the queue with valid documents,” Kumar said. “Accordingly, in order to maintain the smooth functioning and the transparency, he was escorted out of Sanchar Bhawan with the help of the CISF personnel on duty.”
The queue outside was getting restless. “I saw the representatives getting into a scuffle and using force in order to manage their entry and jump the queue for depositing the documents in the receipt counters in the reception,” S E Rizvi, then an under-secretary in DoT, who was in charge of affairs inside the Reception Room, testified to CBI. As the crowd outside got restive, it was decided to let the representatives of other companies also go inside. Kumar said: “This was done to facilitate the quick receipt of the documents in a smooth manner as there was a crowd collecting outside.” Chandolia and some other senior DoT officers saw the proceedings from the parking lot opposite the reception area.
At 5:30 pm, the gates were closed. Letters of intent were issued for 122 licences on that eventful day: Unitech Wireless (22 licences), Videocon (21 licences), Loop Telecom (21 licences), Sistema Shyam (21 licences), Etisalat DB (15 licences), Idea Cellular (13 licences), S Tel (6 licences) and Tata Teleservices (3 licences).The government had gotten richer by Rs 12,386 crore in one day.
* * *
These events left many people speechless. Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla group of which Idea Cellular was a part, wrote to Behura the very next day, January 11. “The press release of DoT placed on the website around 2:45 pm on January 10, asking applicants to assemble at Sanchar Bhawan at 3:30 pm to collect the letters of intent, and the subsequent events of January 10 must be the most unusual practice ever followed by the government.”
Birla then vented his ire against the twist in the first-come, first-served policy. “The grant of the wireless operating licence has to be dependent only on the date of application. Doing otherwise would be contrary to the policy. It would amount to changing the policy from first-come, first-served to first-served, first-come.”
The protest built up in the weeks and months that followed and culminated in last week’s Supreme Court verdict that cancelled all 122 licences.
