Court to take cognisance of charges in spectrum case in NDA regime on Jan 30

A Delhi court today fixed January 30 to consider taking cognisance of the CBI chargesheet filed against Airtel, Vodafone and others for alleged irregularities in allocation of additional spectrum to them during NDA regime.

Special CBI judge O P Saini, who earlier had fixed January 14 to consider taking cognisance of the chargesheet filed on December 21 last year, deferred its order on the issue after the CBI submitted that they need over two weeks more to file some more documents before the court.

"Put up for consideration on cognisance on January 30," the judge said.

During the brief hearing, CBI prosecutor A K Singh told the court that they have filed in the court all the documents relied upon by the agency but they need two weeks more to file some "unrelied documents" which are in agency's possession.

"There are some unrelied documents and if the court feels, it can order and then we will place it in the court. We have filed the relied-upon documents. We will file all the documents by next date and we need two weeks time," the prosecutor said.

The court allowed the CBI's plea for placing before it the unrelied documents and fixed the matter for January 30.

The chargesheet has named three telecom firms – Bharti Cellular Ltd, Hutchison Max Pvt Ltd (now known as Vodafone India Ltd) and Sterling Cellular Ltd (now known as Vodafone Mobile Service Ltd) – as accused in the case in which the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) had allegedly allocated additional spectrum resulting in loss of Rs 846 crore to the exchequer.

In the chargesheet filed against the three telecom companies, CBI has said that during the pendency of IPO of M/s Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd, a Bharti Group company, decision in this regard was taken by then erstwhile Telecom Minister Pramod Mahajan, who was not named as accused as he is no more.

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