Shourie to appear before CBI

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has asked former Telecom Minister Arun Shourie to appear before the agency in connection with the ongoing 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Sleuths of the agency had approached Shourie last week and asked him to become part of the investigation.

Earlier, the CBI had registered a preliminary enquiry against unknown persons on the directions of the Supreme Court. The agency is trying to ascertain whether the first-come-first-serve policy made by the Cabinet members of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee's NDA government was followed or not. Shourie was the telecom minister from January 2003 to May 2004 in the NDA regime.

Shourie, has already said he will appear before the CBI on February 21, once he is back in Delhi from his ongoing tour of West Bengal.

The CBI is already going into the documents of the companies related to first-come-first-serve basis.

The agency has said around 50 licences were given to telecom companies on this basis and Bharti, Vodafone and Idea were the companies that had allegedly benefited from government policy.

The Supreme Court, which is monitoring the probe, had directed the CBI to investigate the government's policy since 2001 which includes terms of both the NDA and UPA governments.

The CBI is expected to give its report to the Supreme Court soon after it completes the investigation.

While giving directions to the CBI, the apex court had said there were possible serious irregularities in the process of issuing 122 licences and had also given a seven-point direction to the investigating agencies to investigate in detail.