By IANS,
New Delhi : The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing India’s telecom pricing policy in connection with the 2G scam will Thursday start questioning nine former telecom secretaries, including the jailed Siddharth Behura.
The other former secretaries who will testify before the multi-party parliamentary probe panel are A.V. Gokak, Anil Kumar, Shyamal Ghosh, Vinod Vaish, Nripendra Misra, J.S. Sharma, D.S. Mathur and P.J. Thomas.
They held office between 1998 and 2008 and will depose separately before the panel July 7, 8, 11 and 12, according to sources.
The sources said the panel will question Verma and Gokak in Thursday’s sitting.
Behura, in Tihar Jail since Feb 2, will appear before the JPC July 12 following an order from a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court.
The CBI has alleged that Behura, who was the telecom secretary from January 2008 to September 2009, indulged in criminal conspiracy in allotting second generation spectrum licences to telecom companies when A. Raja – who is also in jail – was the IT and communication minister.
Apart from Raja and Behura, 12 others, including DMK chief M. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi, have been jailed for their alleged involvement in the 2G scam, which the Comptroller and Auditor General says caused a presumptive loss of Rs.1.76 lakh crore as the scarce airwaves were sold at throwaway prices.
The JPC has also called former attorney general Soli Sorabjee for questioning about alleged losses incurred due to changes in the telecom policy during Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) rule in 1999.
The BJP government had allowed operators to migrate from the fixed licence fee regime to the revenue-sharing model.
Sorabjee will appear before the panel July 13, the sources said.
Former Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chiefs, including S.S. Sodhi, M.S. Verma and Pradip Baijal, have also been called to appear before the committee.
According to JPC chairman P.C. Chacko, the panel has shortlisted 85 people to be called as witnesses before the committee. These include all communication ministers between 1998 and 2008, including Raja.
Those to be called before the panel also include officials of the 11 firms which benefited in the 2008 licence allocation and 22 companies which got advantages due to the 1999 telecom migration policy.
The JPC is examining India’s telecom pricing policy from 1998-2008 that covers the period of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the BJP that was in power 1998-2004.
The panel was formed following persistent demands by the opposition after allegations of irregularities in the allocation of licences for second generation mobile telephony.