2G Scam and the Government Exchequer

It is a long sequence of events that got unfolded with the 2G scam gaining the hype and becoming the most watched, biggest ever scam involving top and well known corporate houses of the country. Starting 2008, when the six telecom companies were issued 2G licences, the controversy rose in 2009 when CBI lodged an FIR stating the “Loss to the Exchequer” to be an estimated Rs 22,000 crores on account of issuance of these licenses. It further became worse with a CAG report insinuating this figure to be Rs 1.76 lakh crores, without mentioning that the estimate was based on the comparison with 3-G spectrum allocation.

The Government and media bandied with this figure very well knowing that comparison with 3-G spectrum didn’t make any sense as it is was completely different in terms of technology, revenue potential, etc. With such figures being spoken about, there were serious concerns about the estimates and the actual loss to the exchequer. Surprisingly, this whole theory of ‘Loss to Exchequer” has now got replaced by “additional revenue which could have been accrued to the Government Exchequer”.

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Questions raised on 2G scam CBI charge-sheet

The charge-sheet filed by CBI in the country’s most high profile case has raised doubts over the authenticity of the investigations. There were a number of telecom operators who received the UASL in 2008 by A Raja, who was the issuing authority at that time. Putting A Raja behind bars for wrongly granting the licenses to these companies reflect that the procedure followed for issuing licenses was allegedly wrong. In this case, all the telecom operators, namely Datacom, Loop, Unitech Wireless, Shyam Sistema, Swan and Allianz Infra, would have got licenses through the incorrect procedure.

Then why only Unitech and Swan (along with ADAG for its link to Swan) named in the charge sheet. How come the same procedure was found right for the other companies and wrong for only these ones. Also, the charge sheet names Sanjay Chandra and Vinod Goenka of the Unitech Wireless and Swan respectively but nowhere mentions Anil Ambani of ADAG. Now if Anil Ambali is the promoter of ADAG, then so are Sanjay Chandra and Vinod Goenda of their respective companies. The reason for this special treatment extended to Anil Ambani remains unknown.

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2G Special Court: Is it competent to carry out a fair trial?

In an interesting move, Supreme Court appointed a Special Court to undertake the trial proceedings of 2G Spectrum Scam. Media has played a crucial role in generating heat about this case and it is reflecting in the trial proceedings, if not fully then at least indirectly in ways that can leave us wondering whether the Special Court will be able to carry out a fair trial. For instance, anyone will be taken aback on hearing that the Special Judge was able to take cognizance of the two charge sheets in just 15 to 20 minutes of receiving these documents.

The element of surprise here is that one charge sheet was of 127 pages & another of 49 pages with their annexures running over 85000 pages. Now, is it that the Special Judge given some specialized training to read these documents so fast or was there some other reason . . . It is a shock to see that the Special Court room where the proceedings were taking place in front of the Special Judge was nothing but a room full of indiscipline. People talking, entering, exiting at their free will. One of the lawyers who was representing one of the accuseds in fact remarked that he was appalled to see that this shabby and congested room would be hearing an all-important case on which the whole country’s attention was tuned into.

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Middle East News

It is a substantially recognized concept that totalistic governments especially belonging to Middle East and Muslim world are regularly employed in unrelenting effort to strangle the high bred technologies of mass-media such as the internet from going against their regional or national privacies for political, security or diplomatic reasons.

Western interests on the other hand seem to be exploiting powers of conventional media to move views of the world to advantage of their interest against other areas of the world and especially towards Middle East and the Muslim world.

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