2G Scam: Former TRAI Chief Seeks Probe Into Files Hidden From CAG 

It is not uncommon for retired bureaucrat Pradip Baijal to be referred to as ‘Pugnacious Baijal’. Through his 40-year career, he has earned a reputation of being upright, fearless and outspoken.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) should have realised that when, in the wake of the unfolding of the 2G scam, it tried to bring his actions as chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) under scrutiny. He emerged unscathed, but was deeply hurt and angry and vowed to bring out the truth.

After an e-book last year, his book, A Bureaucrat Fights Back has just hit the stands. In this interview with Seetha, he talks about what motivated him to write the book and how he became a fall guy for a political establishment trying to cover up its tracks.

You had already done an e-book on the 2G scam last year. Why another book now?

I had done the e-book in a hurry because I was criticised for so long by the UPA and I had come out clean in each case, and so I had to relate what happened.

The publishers were reluctant to take my book because I had criticised a lot of very important people and they wanted a lot of due diligence. That would have taken time, so I uploaded the e-book on Amazon. Then I did a thorough study of all that had happened and I got more documents – the Joint Parliamentary Committee report (that was not with me at the time of writing the e-book) and the Public Accounts Committee report. Then books by Subramaniam Swamy and Bhupesh Bhandari came out. So I got many more facts. Then I got facts about former telecommunications and information technology minister [Dayanidhi] Maran – that he wrote to the prime minister that I had not sent him a report that the cabinet had asked for. The report had been sent, it was on the website.

So the current book has been done after much more due diligence, and is a much more superior and aggressive book than the e-book.

The 2G scam started to happen when you were TRAI chairman. Did you sense something wrong?

Maran was telling me not to give the recommendation which the cabinet had asked me to do. [In 2003, Baijal had given a recommendation on the unified access service licence (UASL) regime and this was to be followed by another recommendation on unified service licence (USL).] He said that is the previous cabinet [the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet], you don’t have to give the recommendation. Now, I am a bureaucrat and therefore I was very clear – previous cabinet or this cabinet I have to give the recommendation. And if the government does not want me to give the recommendation, they should give it to me in writing. He was refusing to do so.

I thought if I don’t give the recommendation, naturally, Maran will sell [spectrum] at the old prices, on the basis of the old recommendation, and then get out very easily by saying the regulator maliciously did not give the recommendation. Which he tried to do, because he wrote to the prime minister in 2005, even when I had given the recommendation in January that year, saying I had not given it.

Perhaps he realised or his officers told him you can’t say this because the recommendations are on the web. Therefore, he asked for more recommendations. And he raised the question, how many licences can I give. And he got the recommendations from TRAI in a very hurried manner, the consultation was done in just one month. It was obvious that he had pressurised TRAI to give a recommendation, hurriedly. That recommendation said the government can add any number of operators and ultimately the number would be dependent on the amount of spectrum. But TRAI also said that if you try to give spectrum at the old price, please correct it by a market mechanism. He didn’t do that. So he picked up one recommendation and not the others.

You say he was pressurising you not to give the second recommendation you were due to. Why do you think he was so keen on the 2003 recommendation?

Because the first recommendation was about UASL. The second was on USL, which was more unified network. The second recommendation would have led to another regime in which how the tariff etc would have got fixed and spectrum given to how many people was all indefinite. So he did not want to risk a new recommendation. Therefore, he followed the old recommendation, completely ignoring the 2005 recommendations of January and May. In those recommendations, there was a new regime, in the second recommendation there was an issue of auction also.

And then, rightly, the second recommendation was given by me to the cabinet, so he could not give final orders. He had to go to the cabinet, but he was very scared of going to the cabinet or the finance ministry because he did not know what would come out of both. So, therefore, he saw to it that he took the decision himself. He gave the licence in one case in 2006 itself. All the others were done by Raja.

The scam broke after you left, but the blame started being shifted to you. Why?

It got noticed in 2008. But nothing happened. People kept complaining and no one listened. Till Subramaniam Swamy first wrote to the prime minister and then went to the Supreme Court in a public interest litigation (PIL). Even then perhaps the case would have gone on, technical objections raised etc. Then senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan also filed a PIL. The India Against Corruption movement took it up. Finally, the Supreme Court instituted a special investigation team (SIT). It completely went out of their hands.

Then they thought of an escape route. And what was that? Remove some files, which was done in many other cases at that point of time (CWG scam, Ishrat Jahan case), and you blame anyone. You have a manageable Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

They thought we can’t fix Arun Shourie, because he is much too smart for us. So somebody decided to fix Pradip Baijal. Once you fix him, people would think he has done all the fishy business. This was not logical. Spectrum had been sold in 2008 at 2002 prices. And because of the phenomenal growth in the telecom sector, the spectrum value had skyrocketed. So even if I had not given the recommendation, spectrum could not have been sold at the same price. But the intriguers would have said but Pradip Baijal got convicted and people would not have understood why he got convicted, what was the charge.

I was able to produce in two months all the documents which showed that I was not at fault. But even then the inquiry continued. Even then my house was raided. So it was conspiracy to show that I was at fault and that Raja and everyone else who had conspired to sell spectrum at a very low price, had got confused.

You had alerted the prime minister while you were TRAI chairman about things going wrong, but he didn’t listen and Maran also threatened you?

Maran was a young minister and he didn’t know how governments worked. He only thought that I am a youngster and I will get what I want implemented – making maximum money out of the network. When I said no to him, he said you will get into trouble, which I did later on. I even met the prime minister once and he said you must follow the minister. Every prime minister will say that. But I told him the implications of following the minister and I said I can’t do it.

I have been in government for 40 years. That lakhs of crores get diverted out of government funds is positively the fault of the minister in charge of the department and then, according to the rules of the business, that of the prime minister and the finance minister. And if you see the letter of Pranab Mukherjee as finance minister much later in 2011, it clearly shows that they were objecting, but not objecting loudly. Even the secretary, department of telecom, was objecting at times, but no one was trying to stop the steamrolling of Raja and Maran.

Incumbent telecom  players lobbied against you but in your book you mention only Rajeev Chandrashekhar. Why?

In all networks, incumbents don’t want anyone else to enter. It is like the third-class compartment mentality. Hum to aa gaye, baaki jo aaye unko dhakka de kar baahar nikal do (we have come in now, kick out anyone else who tries to enter). Naturally, it is the job of the regulator to ensure that there is adequate competition.

In the case of [Justice S S] Sodhi [the first TRAI chairman], MTNL and BSNL were the incumbents and they were very upset. He was bringing more players. In my time, the incumbents got very worked up that I was trying to increase the number of players and that I was bringing the tariffs down by cutting the rates, by reducing the interconnection and call termination charges. And therefore I have a feeling – I have no evidence – that they also started complaining against me, not publicly, but privately. But they couldn’t go far ahead because the network exploded and by 2010, every player was making a huge profit.

Chandrashekhar’s case is totally different. I found letters in the CBI – long letters that Chandrashekhar kept writing to the SP CBI, who was investigating the case. How can a telecom player be allowed to supervise a CBI inquiry? If you see the letters I have reproduced in the book, he was literally supervising the inquiry.

The other incumbents were not doing it so openly?

I don’t know. But I found Chandrashekhar’s letters. He may be acting on his own or on behalf of the other incumbents.

Questions were raised about your being a consultant to Tatas and Reliance after you retired.

More than one year after leaving TRAI, I became a consultant. All over the world telecom regulators become consultants. Why? Because this was a new discipline and when telecom regulators left the organisation they were very expensive commodity because the knowledge of telecom regulation was not very large and wide. And the rules allowed that I could do anything after one year, except working for the government. When I became a consultant, Tatas used my services for mines and steel. Reliance also used me. But I was used as a consultant by so many countries, ITU, World Bank, other companies, multinationals.

I had two choices. One, join a company as a consultant or a director. I said that was not very respectable. So I became a consultant. I thought there was nothing wrong. Even today there is nothing wrong.

Ironically, you had fined both Tatas and Reliance while you were at TRAI?

Yes, I had fined Reliance Rs 5,000 crores for limited mobility. I had not fined Tatas but TDSAT, which was an appellate authority, had imposed a fine because it thought Tatas had come up in a petition against a TRAI order and that petition was frivolous.

What is chilling in your account is the way the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) was duped, in a way.

The fact that files were taken away when the CAG team came is a very serious charge and there should be an inquiry. And I have highlighted all the circumstances. The files were removed both in TRAI and in the government. All the subsequent letters are there but the crucial letter of 14 January is not there. And I found those letters in the subsequent files. It is something very serious if CAG is not given documents and then it comes to an erroneous conclusion.

What is your advice to bureaucrats that they should not find themselves in situations like yours and other bureaucrats you mention like Shyamal Ghosh, former telecom secretary, and P C Parakh, former coal secretary?

On sensitive issues, never take a decision yourself. All decisions should be taken by multiple member bodies – committee of joint secretaries, committee of secretaries, group of ministers. You can easily do that.  And in notes, put in everything, don’t hide. So once you are able to prove that you alone have not taken a decision then you can save yourself. If necessary, send the file to the minister also.

Second, the law used to say that the government cannot start an enquiry against me four years after I retire. Why should that not be for CBI inquiries also?

The current amendment of the Prevention of Corruption Act says that even if I have not taken five rupees, I can be prosecuted for allowing someone else to benefit commercially. In one of the coal scam cases, this provision has been stayed by the Supreme Court. But I find it as an illogical provision - that money doesn’t change hands, someone does a minor mistake and just because government loses money...

Earlier, everyone knew who was corrupt and who was non-corrupt and the non-corrupt were generally not persecuted. But these days no one knows where the power lies and who decides to prosecute you – CBI, Central Vigilance Commission, some functionary in the judiciary, the press.

Has the press been unfair to you?

When I was doing disinvestment between 2000 and 2003, there was one minor case based on a CAG observation, where some people in the CBI asked me, I replied and the case was closed. That file had also gone to P Chidambaram later and he said there was nothing wrong. The problems came when cases were registered against me in 2014 for cases of 2002 - 12 years later. In these 12 years, all these cases had gone to the CAG, high court, Supreme Court and not one mistake was found. So when these new cases came, no one in the press pointed this out.

I think the press has become very fond of creating scams and rumours and writing something which is wrong. The competitive press today has become more of a prosecutor without application of the mind.

In telecom, I wound up my office in 2006; the first inquiry was in 2010. For four years there was nothing. Suddenly in 2010 a flood of complaints came because the political government was interested in that. No one in the press questioned that how is that for four years nothing happened. And that is why I feel the press has been unfair to me. No one defended me.