- (1.) Leave granted.
(2.) Whether a complaint can be filed by a citizen for prosecuting a public servant for an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (for short, the 1988 Act ) and whether the authority competent to sanction prosecution of a public servant for offences under the 1988 Act is required to take an appropriate decision within the time specified in clause I(15) of the directions contained in paragraph 58 of the judgment of this Court in Vineet Narain v. Union of India, 1998 1 SCC 226 and the guidelines issued by the Central Government, Department of Personnel and Training and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) are the question which require consideration in this appeal.
(3.) For the last more than three years, the appellant has been vigorously pursuing, in public interest, the cases allegedly involving loss of thousands of crores of rupees to the Public Exchequer due to arbitrary and illegal grant of licences at the behest of Mr. A. Raja (respondent No. 2) who was appointed as Minister for Communication and Information Technology on 16.5.2007 by the President on the advice of Dr. Manmohan Singh (respondent No. 1). After collecting information about the grant of licences, the appellant made detailed representation dated 29.11.2008 to respondent No. 1 to accord sanction for prosecution of respondent No. 2 for offences under the 1988 Act. In his representation, the appellant pointed out that respondent No. 2 had allotted new licences in 2G mobile services on first come, first served basis to novice telecom companies, viz., Swan Telecom and Unitech, which was in clear violation of Clause 8 of the Guidelines for United Access Services Licence issued by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology vide letter No.10-21/2005-BS.I(Vol.II)/49 dated 14.12.2005 and, thereby, caused loss of over Rs. 50,000 crores to the Government. The appellant gave details of the violation of Clause 8 and pointed out that the two officers, viz., R.J.S. Kushwaha and D. Jha of the Department of Telecom, who had opposed the showing of undue favour to Swan Telecom, were transferred just before the grant of licences and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) which had never entered into a roaming agreement with any operator, was forced to enter into such an agreement with Swan Telecom. The appellant further pointed out that immediately after acquiring 2G spectrum licences, Swan Telecom and Unitech sold their stakes to foreign companies, i.e., Etisalat, a telecom operator from UAE and Telenor of Norway respectively and, thereby, made huge profits at the expense of public revenue. He claimed that by 2G spectrum allocation under respondent No. 2, the Government received only one-sixth of what it would have received if it had opted for an auction. The appellant pointed out how respondent No. 2 ignored the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and gave totally unwarranted benefits to the two companies and thereby caused loss to the Public Exchequer. Some of the portions of the appellant s representation are extracted below: Clause 8 has been violated as follows: While Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), the promoters of Reliance Communications (R Com), had more than 10 per cent stake in Swan Telecom, the figures were manipulated and showed as 9.99 per cent holding to beat the said Clause. The documents available disclose that on March 2, 2007, when Swan Telecom applied for United Access Services Licences, it was owned 100 per cent by Reliance Communications and its associates viz. Reliance Telecom, and by Tiger Trustees Limited, Swan Infonet Services Private Limited, and Swan Advisory Services Private Limited (see Annexure I). At one or the other point of time, employees of ADAG (Himanshu Agarwal, Ashish Karyekar, Paresh Rathod) or its associate companies have been acquiring the shares of Swan Telecom itself. But still the ADAG manipulated the holdings in Swan to reduce it to only 9.99 per cent. Ambani has now quietly sold his shares in Swan to Delphi Investments, a Mauritius based company owned by Ahmed O. Alfi, specializing in automobile spare parts. In turn, Swan has sold 45% of its shares to UAE s Emirates Telecom Corporation (Etisalat) for Rs.9000 crores! All this is highly suspicious and not normal business transactions. Swan company got 60% of the 22 Telecom licenced areas at a throw away price of Rs.1650 crores, when it was worth Rs.60,000 crores total. Room has operations in the same circles where the application for Swan Telecom was filed. Therefore, under Clause 8 of the Guidelines, Swan should not have been allotted spectrum by the Telecommunication Ministry. But the company did get it on Minister s direction, which is an undue favour from him (Raja). There was obviously a quid pro quo which only a CBI enquiry can reveal, after an FIR is registered. There is no need for a P/E, because the CVC has already done the preliminary enquiry. Quite surprisingly, the 2G spectrum licences were priced at 2001 levels to benefit these private players. That was when there were only 4 million cellphone subscribers; now it is 350 million. Hence 2001 price is not applicable today. Immediately after acquiring 2G spectrum licences both Swan and Unitech sold their stakes to foreign companies at a huge profits. While Swan Telecom sold its stakes to UAE telecom operator Etisalat, Unitech signed a deal with Telenor of Norway for selling its share at huge premiums. In the process of this 2G spectrum allocation, the government received only one-sixth of what it would have got had it gone through a fresh auction route. The total loss to the exchequer of giving away 2G GSM spectrum in this way including to the CDMA operators is over Rs.50,000 crores and is said to be one of the biggest financial scams of all times in the country. While approving the 2G licences, Minister Raja turned a blind eye to the fact that these two companies do not have any infrastructure to launch their services. Falsely claiming that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had approved the first-cum-first served rule, Raja went ahead with the 2G spectrum allocation to two debutants in the Telecom sector. In fact earlier TRAI had discussed the spectrum allocation issue with existing services providers and suggested to the Telecom Ministry that spectrum allocation be made through a transparent tender and auction process. This is confirmed by what the TRAI Chairman N. Misra told the CII organized conference on November 28, 2008 (Annexure 2). But Raja did not bother to listen to the TRAI either and pursued the process on first come, first served basis, benefiting those who had inside information, causing a loss of Rs.50,000 crores to the Government. His dubious move has been to ensure benefit to others at the cost of the national exchequer. The request made in the representation, which was relied upon by the learned Attorney General for showing that the appellant had himself asked for an investigation, is also extracted below: According to an uncontradicted report in CNN-IBN news channel of November 26, 2008, you are said to be very upset with A. Raja over the spectrum allocation issue . This confirms that an investigation is necessary, for which I may be given sanction so that the process of law can be initiated. I, therefore, writ to demand the grant of sanction to prosecute Mr. A. Raja, Minister for Telecom of the Union of India for offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The charges in brief are annexed herewith (Annexure 3). ;