Arun Shourie appears before CBI on 2G case

Senior BJP leader Arun Shourie on Friday reached the head quarters of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in New Delhi regarding the 2G spectrum scam issue. He is likely to be questioned by the investigating agency over the irregularities in 2G spectrum allocation.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had approached Shourie earlier this month to join the 2G scam investigations.

Shourie, who held the telecom portfolio between January 2003 and May 2004 in the NDA regime, had dismissed the Justice Patil report on 2G scam as 'fabricated' and claimed that he apprised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the irregularities in the allotment of 2G licenses 18 months ago.

He is expected to hand over some vital documents to the central investigating agency. The Preliminary Enquiry (PE) was registered by the agency following a direction from the Supreme Court against "unknown persons" with an aim to ascertaining as to whether or not the "first-come-first-serve basis" provision passed by the then Cabinet led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee was followed, officials said. The CBI is likely to go into the minutes of the meetings held by successive Telecom Ministers which include late Pramod Mahajan, Shourie and Dayanidhi Maran of DMK. According to the CBI, nearly 50 licences were given out on the first-come-first-serve basis and Bharti, Vodafone and Idea were among the beneficiaries of the policy. The CBI would go into the documents of the companies who have been awarded the contracts. The Supreme Court had on December 16 last year directed the agency to widen its investigation to cover the grant of licences by both the NDA and the UPA regimes between 2001 and 2007 and submit a report.