Bharti Airtel promoter Sunil Mittal has moved Supreme Court seeking quashing of an order by the special 2G court summoning him as accused in the case related to allocation of additional spectrum.
The CBI Special Court had summoned top telecom executives including Mittal, Ravi Ruia of Essar Group, and Asim Ghosh, former Managing Director of Hutchison Max (now Vodafone India), for their alleged involvement in additional spectrum allocation in 2002.
Shyamal Ghosh, former Secretary of Department of Telecom, has also been summoned on April 11. While the CBI charge-sheet had not named these individuals, Special Judge O.P. Saini said that these executives were in control of affairs of the respective companies.
“As such they represent the directing mind of the companies. In this situation, the acts of the companies are to be attributed and imputed to them. Consequently, I find enough material on record to proceed against them also,’’ stated the two-page order given by Saini.
The case dates back to 2002 when the Telecom Ministry, under Pramod Mahajan, introduced new spectrum allocation rules based on subscriber-linked criteria. While the technical committee of the DoT had recommended allotting additional spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz only after the operators reached a subscriber base of 9 lakh, the requirement was reduced by the DoT to 4 lakh.