Even as India’s troubles with its 3G auctions seem to be never ending and elsewhere in the world, commercial roll out of 4G is making steady progress, the country’s allotment of 2G licenses last year is now under the cloud of a major corruption scandal.
The central bureau of investigations yesterday searched the offices of the Department of Telecommunications and said it has registered a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act against “unknown” DoT officials, private persons and companies, and others.
“It has been alleged that there had been serious irregularities in the award of Unified Access Services Licenses to private companies. As per information received, there was criminal conspiracy between certain officials of Department of Telecommunication (DoT) and private persons/ companies and others in order to award licenses to these companies by putting a cap on the number of applicants against recommendations of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and by awarding licenses to private companies on first come first serve basis on the rates of 2001 without any competitive bidding,” the CBI said in a statement. The agency said it was conducting the search for incriminating documents.
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