Is 2010 a year of scams?

2G SPECTRUM SCAM

UP FOOD SCAM

ADARSH SOCIETY SCAM

CWG

IPL

KARNATKA LAND SCAM

 Presented by:

Roshan Nahata
Ankur Gupta
Ankit Mishra
Kunal Gupta
Gaurav Seth
shiv mohan mittal
 MORAL ISSUES INVOLVED
 Under pricing second generation (2G) spectrum
 Since the spectrum was scarce, the grant of licences on the
basis of 2001 price was ex facie contrary to public interest and
a mala fide action on the part of Mr. A Raja and officers of
DoT
 Allocating more spectrum to companies than what their
licences specified
 It was made clear that LOIS (letters of intent for issuance of
licences) would be issued to those who deposit their fees
first, beating others by even a fraction of a second
 CONTD…
 13 companies that had received 85 out of the 122 new
licences issued in 2008 did not satisfy the DoT eligibility
conditions
 Spectrum was provided beyond the contracted 6.2
megahertz (MHZ) to nine existing operators in 2007 despite
a number of applications pending for new licences
 In 2010 when the government was able to raise more than Rs.
1,11,500 crores through public auction of 3G spectrum, Raja
claimed that 2G spectrum and 3G spectrum were not
comparable
 CONTD…
 The critics alleged that Dutt and Sanghvi knew about
corruption between the government and the media industry,
supported this corrupt activity, and suppressed news
reporting the discovery of the corruption
 If the prime minister was indeed aware of what was going
on, why did he not take any action against Raja?
 LS??
I NA
CR IM
?
A Raja
A Raja was born in May 1963 in Perambalur, Tamil Nadu
He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996
In 2007, he became cabinet minister for communication
and information technology
On being re-elected in 2009 he was again appointed
cabinet minister for communication and information
technology
Raja hit headlines for the wrong reasons ever since he
allocated license for the 2G bandwidth in 2007
The licences were allotted on the basis of “First come
First serve Method” rather than through the process of
auction as stipulated under the national telecom
policy 1999.
The cut off time had been reduced form October 1,
2007, to September 25, 2007 without consulting and
informing other related ministries
Only a few companies were informed about the
change while others were not informed and they were
not able to arrange money in such a short span of time.
The companies who were allotted the 2G licenses did
not have any experience in the telecom sector or the
technology and thus sold their stake to foreign telecom
companies at high prices
 The 2G spectrum was allotted in 2008 at a price level
of 2001
 This resulted in a loss of approx. Rs. 170,000 Cr. to the
exchequer, which is the biggest financial scam in the
Indian history.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India held Mr. A Raja as
personally responsible for the scam
 In his report, CAG informed the parliament that telecom minister
ignored the advice of 2G allocation from PMO and other related
ministries such as law and finance, and took the decisions to allot
the 2G spectrum at throw away prices
As a result of which the GOI was pressurized to remove Raja from
his office
At first, DMK resisted against removing Raja and there was
speculation of DMK splitting away from UPA as Raja was the most
prominent Dalit face that the DMK had
Finally, On November 14, 2010, he announced that he would step
down from his cabinet post, over the 2G spectrum allocation
scandal
Now, he is being questioned by CBI over his role in the Scam
Manmohan Singh
The Prime Minister of India was involved into the issue by
Subramaniam Swamy, activist lawyer and politician, whose
letters to the Prime Minister demanding action and
affidavits and cases in the Supreme Court bought the issue
into the public limelight
He was accused of ignoring the requests for scrutinizing
the 2G spectrum allocation process
He was charged of inaction on Swamy’s petition seeking
sanction to prosecute Raja
UPA has rallied behind Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
with senior Cabinet ministers and Congress leaders
coming out openly to defend him
In a major breather for Singh, a bench of Justices GS
Singhvi and AK Ganguly, taking up the prime minister’s
affidavit on charges of inaction on Swamy’s petition
seeking sanction to prosecute Raja, observed that the
prime minister had not intended to block the sanction
Manmohan Singh had been able to keep a clean image till
now even after being in a political party which has a rich
history and tradition of Scams and Scandals
Nira Radia
Nira Radia runs a public relations firm named Vaishnavi
Corporate Communications, and also operates through
subsidiaries such as Neucom, Noesis Strategic Consulting
Services and Vitcom Consulting, whose clients, among
others, include Ratan Tata's Tata Group, Mukesh Ambani’s
Reliance Industries and Prannoy Roy's NDTV.
After getting authorization from the Ministry of Home
Affairs, the Indian Income Tax department tapped Radia's
phone lines for 300 days in 2008-2009, as part of its
investigations into alleged large scale money laundering,
tax evasion and financial malpractices by Nira Radia
Barkha Dutt
In one of the tapes Barkha, assures Radia of getting
Ghulam Nabi Azad, Congress general secretary to talk
to Karunanidhi to get the portfolios in the Union
cabinet fixed.
 Barkha has denied acting on any promise to pass on
messages to the Congress. In a subsequent tape, Nira
Radia is heard saying ‘Barkha has got
Congress(political party) to issue a statement’.
This scandal has also been called Barkhagate
Ratan Tata
The tapes leaked to the public include conversations
between Nira Radia and Ratan Tata.
Tata petitioned the government to acknowledge his
right to privacy and demanded accountability for the
leak, with the Minister for Home Affairs, CBI, Indian
Income Tax Department, the Department of
Telecommunication, and the Department of
Information Technology as respondents in the petition
Kapil Sibal
Kapil Sibal is in trouble for slamming
CAG(comptroller and auditor general) on 2G spectrum
scam
He has unnecessarily drawn the ire by claiming that
the amount of loss has been overstated and actually
there had been no loss to the exchequer
The Supreme Court criticized him for his comments
 Consequences of Scam
 In early November 2010 Jayalalithaa accused DMK chief M Karunanidhi of
protecting A. Raja from corruption charges and called for Raja's resignation
 By mid November A. Raja resigned
 In mid November the comptroller Vinod Rai issued show-cause notices to
Unitech, S Tel, Loop Mobile, Datacom (Videocon), and Etisalat to respond
to his assertion that all of the 85 licenses granted to these companies did not
have the up-front capital required at the time of the application and were in
other ways illegal
 In response to the various allegations, the GOI has replaced Raja with Kapil
Sibal
 Mr Sibal contends that the "notional" losses quoted are a result of erroneous
calculations and insists that the actual losses are nil. The Supreme Court
criticised Kapil Sibal for his comments. The Supreme Court said it was
"unfortunate" that Sibal had dismissed a state auditor's report that India
may have lost 1,70,000 Cr. in revenue as a result of irregularities in awarding
telecoms licences in 2008.
This scam has raised Questions on Prime Minister, Man Mohan Singh
also who had kept a clean image
Nira Radia faces grilling from CBI third time on 27th January
This scam also raised questions on Mr. Ratan Tata’s image
BJP has also been criticized saying that all these policies were put in
place by tem when they were in power
Media image also got damaged due to this scam because of names like
Barkha Dutt , Vir Shanghavi coming in scam.
Barkha Dutt, an NDTV journalist alleged to have lobbied for A. Raja's
appointment as minister
Vir Sanghvi, a Hindustan Times editor alleged to have edited articles to
reduce blame in the Nira Radia tapes
Media sources such as OPEN and Outlook reported that Barkha Dutt and
Vir Sanghvi knew that corporate lobbyist Nira Radia was influencing the
decisions of A. Raja.
The critics alleged that Dutt and Sanghvi knew about corruption between
the government and the media industry, supported this corrupt activity,
and suppressed news reporting the discovery of the corruption.