CAG has completed the investigation and has already received a response to the draft report from the Department of Telecom.
According to a senior official in CAG, it has found sufficient evidence during the course of investigation to implicate the telecom minister.
According to reports from a section of media, CAG in its draft report found that there were serious flaws and irregularities in the process of 2G spectrum allocation.
Allegations against Telecom minister A Raja include spectrum being given to realty firm, which was not eligible to enter the telecom business, personally deciding on various cutoff dates in 2007, and later in January 2008, which favoured select companies.
Fingers have also been pointed at Raja on controversial moves like a one hour window to submit a demand draft of very high value for the spectrum, and advancing the last date of submission of applications was directly ordered by A Raja.
The auditor has found that operators who benefited were able to arrange for and submit high value demand drafts within 45 minutes of the press release being uploaded. This is very surprising. And it therefore appears that these operators must have some prior information, so as to have arranged the demand drafts, some of which were made in Mumbai.
Applications for telecom licences were invited for offering 2G services and deadline for submitting the applications was 1 October 2007. However, the date for submitting the application was revised to 25 September 2007.
The 2G spectrum allocation scam is said to be the biggest scam in the history of independent India, pegged at a whopping Rs 60,000 crore (Rs 600 billion).
In 2007, telecom ministry gave 2G spectrum bundled with USAL licenses to nine private operators for a paltry sum of Rs 1,650 crore; while Unitech, one of the nine operators, sold around 67 per cent stake to Telenor for around Rs 11,000 crore soon after getting the license.
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