DECCAN INQUIRER - weekly e news paper: 2020

Sunday, June 28, 2020

SCI & Lake Encroachments

DECCAN INQUIRER

Weekly e news paper

Editor: Nagaraja.M.R.. Vol.01....Issue.06............01/07/2020

RTI Request to Honourable Chief Justice of India

- Lake Encroachments by criminals

Refer RTI request no: JUSTC/R/E/20/01858

Honourable Sir,

SCI through various judgements has clearly ordered public authorities, government and public NOT to encroach lakes , ponds and feeder canals which feeds water to them. Land mafia in total contempt of supreme court has encroached many lakes , built huge complexes. Please give me information regarding following :

1. List of Lakes , Ponds encroached by land mafia in Mysuru and Bengaluru.

2. List of legal action taken by SCI against guilty public servants and guilty public for contempt of supreme court of india.

3. List of legal action taken by SCI based on findings of two parliamentary committees headed by Mr.Koliwad , Mr.A.T.Ramaswamy and one expert committee headed by Mr.Subramaniam which inspected lake , feeder canal encroachments.

4. List of legal action taken by SCI against judges who were illegally alloted sites in Judicial Layout Yelahanka Bengaluru. Is this illegal allotment gratification by powers that be to the judges ( for keeping mum inspite of illegalities by powers that be ) ?

Lake Encroachment SCI case details at following web sites :

https://www.casemine.com/search/in/ponds%20and%20lakes ,

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.oneindia.com/amphtml/india/sc-upholds-ngt-order-on-encroachment-bellandur-agara-wetland-2860401.html ,

Also read :

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/hc-judges-favoring-mafia

Following two examples , actual cases highlighting the judicial delays :

1. In Mysore ideal Jawa Factory , company was locked out. Huge amounts were outstanding to banks , suppliers , employees. The land usage , alienation could have been converted from industrial use to commercial to get higher market price and then auctioned. We appealed for same to authorities including SCI , but they didn’t heed. It was auctioned off for lesser price , proceeds earned was far less to fully pay outstanding amounts to banks , suppliers and employees. They were only paid less amounts , thus public banks , suppliers , employees were cheated of their rightful dues. Afterwards the new buyer got the alienation , converted it from industrial use to commercial usage , demolished factory building built huge residential complex and earned crores of rupees profit.

2. In mysore BEML quarters lake, Hootagalli lake & Hebbal lake are encroached. In the beginning itself , I have appealed to authorities , SCI , CJI to stop the encroachments. District magistrate at that time threatened me. Even some citizens groups led protest marches. Nobody was botherd. Today all akes are encroached , huge buildings , factories are functioning.

Save Hebbal Lake Save BEML Quarters Lake in Mysore

– An Appeal to Honourable Supreme Court of India

In the past , Mysore Maharaja & other philanthropists have donated their personal lands , properties , built many lakes & ponds in mysore , bangalore and other places with public concern , public wellbeing in their mind . They built these lakes & ponds in addition to preserving the natural lakes & ponds. They knew about the importance of ecological balance & environment. The present rulers , IAS & KAS babus have even failed to preserve the lakes & ponds built decades ago , let alone build one. These Public servants have extended their tacit support to building mafia , to kill these lakes & ponds , to fill those lakes with industrial effluents , sewage & building mud wastes. After killing those lakes & ponds , the building mafia encroaches on it & usurps that public property in turn selling it for crores of rupees.

In this way , Hootagalli lake was killed & encroached by Kaynes Hotel ( now silent shores hotel) , Hebbal Lake is being killed & encroached from all sides by industries and the lake infront of BEML Quarters is being killed & land demarcation for selling those land has already begun.

The public servants were totally indifferent towards public outcry against this . The IAS & KAS babus who are also magistrates with judicial authority have failed in preserving these lakes & ponds inspite of appeals to them. These death of lakes resulting in their encroachments could have been prevented earlier by DC , Tahsildar , MUDA Commissioner & KIADB Officers. Even I have appealed to them through my web news paper , they didn’t take action at all. I have made RTI request to those authorities to give me information regarding status of those lakes years ago , fearing truth will come out they didn’t anwer my questions in full , they only gave half truths. When I persisited with my RTI request the Mysore District Magistrate at that time Mr. P.Manivannan repeatedly called me over phone , abused me & threatened me . Even threats were made by some policemen in mufti . Finally that lake land was allotted to an industrialists supposed to be close to Industries minister at that time. The courts are dispassionate & inhuman , while passing eviction orders against poor people , the police are full of guts & show their full bravery , valour against these poor land encroachers. Fine , let us appreciate their duty consciousness . However rich & well connected criminals have illegally encroached upon public lands , the same courts and police are not taking appropriate action inspite of repeated appeals , why ? Even the Supreme Court of India & Police are Weak & Meak before Land Mafia. Don’t the same Judges & Police have Guts , Bravery , Duty Conciousness & Integrity to take action against such rich land grabbers ? The answer lies in the following articles. Once again we offer our conditional services to Supreme Court of India , to legally apprehend criminals while the respective public servants have failed to do the same.

Hereby , we request the honourable Supreme Court of India ,

1. To initiate criminal prosecution against Mysore district magistrate , Mysore taluk magistrate , MUDA Commissioner , Jurisdictional Police Officers & KIADB Officer , for making contempt of Supreme Court of India Order applying throught india to preserve lakes & ponds.

2. To evict all encroachers forth with .

3. To immediately stop all flow of industrial effluents & sewage to these lakes & ponds.

4. To initiate criminal prosecution against encroachers of these lakes & ponds, feeder canals, killers of these lakes.

5. To preserve the said lakes & ponds , by recovering cost from encroachers , polluting industries and the co-conspirators Mysore DC , Mysore Tahsildar , MUDA Commissioner , KIADB Officer & Jurisdictional Police Officers.

6. To protect me , my family members & dependents from land mafia & co-conspirators of the crime.

7. To order , to issue Writ of Mandamus to Mysore District Magistrate , MUDA Commissioner & KIADB Officer to disclose all the information sought by me in my RTI request publicly.

8. Where are the encroachments of various lakes , Raja Kaluve in mysuru city has taken place ? who are the encroachers ? what action taken by authorities ?

9. How much land belonging to Sri Laxmikantaswamy Temple , Hebbal , Mysuru has been encroached ? who are the encroachers ? what action by authorities ?

10. How much land of ningaiah lake encroached ?

11. Is encroachment of public Hootagalli lake by private hotelier justified ?

Date : 28.06.2020 Your’s Sincerely,

Place : Mysore Nagaraja.M.R.

Minister’s DQ proves judges are more corrupt than civil servant

NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: An investigation by Cobra post and IBN Network has revealed how former and sitting judges of Orissa, police officers and bureaucrats have received flats from the DiscretionaryQuota (DQ) of ministers. As a matter of fact, successive Urban Development Ministers in the Naveen Patnaik government have misused the discretionary housing quota.

According to the revelation, the judges have got the ‘minister quota’ flats out of turn and at cheaper rates.

The IBN Network accessed letters of judges written to the government asking for prime property in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar.

Prime properties were acquired in Cuttack at concession rates, bypassing the Cuttack Development Authority. In fact, Sectors 10, 11 and 13 of Cuttack’s Abhinav Bidanasi project has practically become a judges’ residential colony.

Former Chief Justice G B. Patnaik is a resident of flat 1B/22 in Sector 11 while former Orissa High CourtJudge Radhakrishna Patra has flat 1B/23 in the same sector, given out on lease.

Supreme Court judge Deba Priya Mohapatra, Orissa High Court judges Sanju Panda, Madan Mohan Das, Nityanand Prastuti also own flats in Sector 10 and 11.Papers for the flats were prepared quickly and some judges even got preferred plots.

Most of the allotments took place between 2000 and 2007, under the BJP cadre Urban and Housing Development Minister Sameer De who was State Development Minister from 2000-2004 and then Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo who called the shots from 2004 to 2007.

All that the judges had to do was written to the Minister. The CNN-IBN has a letter written by Justice Madan Mohan Das to the CDA Chairman and to Minister Kanak Vardhan Singhdeo, asking for a B-Category Flat in Sector 10, saying he would ensure a third party transfer of a C-Category Flat already owned by his wife.Justice Das was allotted the flat in just six days.

When asked why the discretionary quota was used to make the allotments, Sameer Dey, former Orissa urban development minister, said, “The Orissa act does not have any such rule. There is 5 per cent and 10 per cent allocation in discretionary quota. Apart from that we don’t have any rule.”

Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo, former Orissa urban development minister, said, “The rule is that only those who apply for the project can be allotted land via Discretionary Quota. So if any such person does not apply what can we do?”

CNN-IBN has also found that many of the judges who were allotted land through the discretionary quota already own ancestral property in Cuttack. Yet the ministers were allotted the land they asked for.

LAND SCAM IN TAMILNADU One for my officer, one for my boy…

Land and property are coveted assets. So why are chief ministers allowed to give these away as favours? JEEMON JACOB tracks how Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has been using his quotas

IN NOVEMBER, Chief Minister of Karnataka BS Yeddyurappa almost lost his job, due to the uproar over preferential allotment of land and property to his sons and close associates. He has since cancelled the allotments, asked his children to move out of his official residence, and retained his seat through some deft political manoeuvring and muscle-flexing. At the height of the campaign against him, as political opponents paraded on apparent moral high ground, TEHELKA published details of plots similarly allotted by previous Karnataka chief ministers, both of the Congress and the JD(S), to relatives, servants, drivers, maids and partymen (LAND SCAM 2.0, 4 December). The purpose was not to make Yeddyurappa’s wrongdoings look less shocking, but to show that the problem was endemic and needed rooting out. The right given to chief ministers to hand out public land to a favoured few — relatives, bureaucrats, judges, police officers and others — smacks of nepotism and arbitrary feudal power structures that should have no place in a modern democracy. (Though there is no immediate proof of this, some of these allotments could also be benamitransactions, in which the ultimate ownership remains with the distributor of the largesse, camouflaged by a stack of fake documents.)

This power — euphemistically called “discretionary quota” — has even been used to favour allegedly corrupt army officers like General Deepak Kapoor (AT EASE WITH GREASE, TEHELKA, 20 November), who was given a large 500 sq yd plot in Haryana by the Hooda government, which then faced the embarrassment of refusing him permission to sell it off before five years had elapsed, as per rules. The plot was given to him by the government as preferential allotment in recognition for his ‘outstanding achievement’.

This week, continuing its campaign against out-of-turn allotments of land and property, TEHELKA has an exposé on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. The Tamil Nadu Housing Board (TNHB) which commands a large land bank, has a government discretionary quota (GDQ) under which 15 percent of all allotments can be recommended by the CM. Eligibility for allotment under GDQ is as follows: single/deserted women; widows; social workers; physically handicapped persons; defence personnel; ex-servicemen; eminent persons in the field of science, arts, literature, economics, public administration and sports; freedom fighters; government servants with unblemished service records; employees of PSUs, central government undertakings and nationalised banks; PF institutions; journalists; university staff; and employees of local bodies and municipalities.

While some of these categories sound kosher, most of them raise a fundamental question: why should the government have the power to give coveted land to select employees and journalists over others? The only rationale could be proximity — which is an untenable reason for being the beneficiary of political favours, often worth several crores.

Setting this aside, even within the legal ambit of the GDQ, TEHELKA’s investigation shows that many of the allotments in Karunanidhi’s tenure have violated the rule book. Many bureaucrats and their relatives have been given plots or flats under the category of “social worker”. Some of these last did social work when they were in college; many of them claim to be volunteers in such routine activity as helping in blood donation or eye camps. Many have issued certificates to themselves; some have acquired letters from the Lions and Rotary Clubs with vague endorsements. In other violations, the rules say that no one who has any other land or property in Tamil Nadu or any other capital city, in either their own or spouse or minor children’s name, can apply for GDQ allotments. TEHELKA found this is routinely violated.

Many of the allottees issued certificates to themselves, while some got letters from Lions and Rotary Clubs

The other brazen violation lies in the claim of “unblemished” service records as a qualification for allotment. When RTI activist V Gopalakrishnan sought a list of such bureaucrats, Additional Secretary S Solomon Raj said, “As no unblemished government servant certificates are issued, the question of furnishing a list of names does not arise.” The additional secretary also clarified that the home department didn’t have such a list. This is the phantom category under which many public servants like Jaffar Sait, 1986 batch IPS officer, now Inspector General of Police–Intelligence, got large allotments of land in prime locations. Why them more than hundreds of others? That’s a democratic question the chief minister will have to answer.

jee…@gmail.com

Legal Largesse

R Bhanumathi

Serving Judge, Madras High Court

FLAT NOS: MIG 249-250, SHOLINGANALLUR PHASE III, CHENNAI

DATE: 30 MARCH 2008

SIZE: 120 SQ M & 139 SQ M

PRICE: Rs. 27.55 LAKH & Rs. 30.05 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: NA

VIOLATIONS

The judge was allotted two adjoining plots on the same day (30 March 2008). According to her Disclosure of Assets statement of 2009, the judge already had a house in her name, and another plot in her husband, advocate K Ganesan’s name. The house, in the Uthangarai area of Krishnagiri district, was constructed in 1985 on a plot purchased in 1982. The plot of land is located in Saidapet and was purchased in 1993. She however admits in her declaration that she owns two plots, which she purchased from the TN Housing Board in 2008. But this allocation was made under the General Category. Since judges do not come under any of the quota categories, the government’s way of allotting land to them differs from the rest. Judges are informed about the availability of land. And when they apply for the same, the government facilitates the allotment.

K Raviraja Pandian

Retired Justice, Madras High Court

PLOT NO: B2/5, THIRUVANMIYUR EXTENSION

DATE: 11 NOVEMBER 2009

SIZE: 3,117 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 68.54 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 3.2 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

Close relative of DMK supremo Karunanidhi and the Chairman of the School Fee Determination Committee. Little wonder then he was also the recipient of special favours while he was still a serving judge. At the time of the allotment, the judge owned a 50 percent share in an ancestral house at Thiruveezhimizhalai village. The judge had also sold a property he owned at Pazhavatthankattali village near Kumbakonam. The land was purchased in 1991, a house was constructed on it in 1992 and sold in 2009. He had also sold the landed property of his wife in 2009.

V Ambika

Advocate

PLOT NO: A8, KADAPERY, MADHURANTHAGAM

DATE: 16 FEBRUARY 2008

SIZE: 2,285 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 4.54 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 15 LAKH

VIOLATIONS

The advocate owned landed property in more than one location when she was allotted the plot — one vacant house site in Karanai Puducheri village and another in Katrampakkam village, in Kancheepuram district. Her husband, Justice M Satyanarayanan of the Madras High Court, in his Disclosure of Assets, stated that he owns a repurchased MIG flat constructed in 1969 at Indra Nagar in Chennai. Ambika was allotted land under the GDQ.

Bureaucratic Bonanza

Jaffar Sait

IGP-Intelligence

FLAT NOS: 540, THIRUVANMIYUR, KAMARAJ NAGAR

DATE: 23 APRIL 2008

SIZE: 4,756 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 1.26 CRORE

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 6 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

Allotted under ‘unblemished’ government servant category. On 6 June 2008, the government transferred the ownership of the plot to his daughter Jennifer Jaffar, then a student. Jennifer made two payments of Rs. 46.03 lakh and Rs.1.73 lakh towards cost of the plot. In February 2009, she paid another Rs.60 lakh. After having paid Rs.1.07 crore, the ownership of plot was transferred to her mother Parvin Jaffar. Interestingly, Parvin also made the payment all over again. In October 2009, she paid Rs. 50.64 lakh and then again in November 2009, another Rs. 25 lakh was deposited. A further payment of Rs. 51.5 lakh in the same month was made. Income tax officials feel the Sait family made the double payment to avoid an IT investigation on Jennifer, who would not have been able to show any source of income. The Tamil Nadu Housing Board then returned the original amount paid by Jennifer. Now, Parvin in collaboration with Durga Sankar, son of an IAS officer, has commissioned a builder to construct a multi-storey complex in which 12 flats have already been built. Each flat is expected to fetch an estimated 1 crore. So, by paying Rs. 1.26 crore in 2009, the IGP’s family made a profit of more than Rs. 5.7 crore.

G Prakash

Joint Secretary, Industries

PLOT NO: S6, THIRUVANMIYUR EXTENSION

DATE: 6 MAY 2008

SIZE: 3,829 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 76.58 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 4 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

The former district collector of Tirunelveli issued himself a certificate for unblemished government service.

CK Gariyali

Retired IAS, Secretary to Governor at the time of allotment

FLAT NOS: S4, THIRUVANMIYUR EXTENSION

DATE: 7 MAY 2008

SIZE: 6,023 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 1.20 CRORE. PAYMENT WAS MADE IN 33 INSTALMENTS FROM 18 JULY 2008 TO 6 MARCH 2009

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 6.8 CRORE (APPROX)

VIOLATIONS

Her husband Dr S Rajakumar has a house in Chennai.

Sumathi Ravichandran

Former Regional Passport Officer, Chennai, and close relative of DMK minister K Anbazhagan

PLOT NO: 1050 HIG, MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 28 MARCH 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 59.15 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 1 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

Her husband Dr S Ravichandran owns a plot. Following an RTI probe, the TNHB issued a show-cause notice and placed the allotment under suspension.

Political Perks

L Ganeshan

Former MP, who left Vaiko to join DMK

FLAT NOS: 1052 HIG, MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 27 MARCH 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 79.86 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: NA

VIOLATIONS

Ganeshan is a trade union leader with the DMK and is close to Karunanidhi. He owns property in his as well as his wife’s name.

Brinda Nedunchezhiyan

Wife of late Chezhiyan and daughter-in-law of Agriculture Minister Veerapandi Arumugam

PLOT NO: HIG B 3/14, MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 13 MARCH 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 9.82 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 45-50 LAKH

VIOLATIONS

Allotted flat under Social worker category. The tehsildar of Salem issued her a certificate though he is not empowered to. The certificate says she “is a well-known social worker involved in social welfare activities such as president of Poolavari village panchayat, head of parent-teachers association, participating in educational programmes of many schools”.

S Rajalakshmi

Wife of R Sakkarapani, MLA and DMK chief whip

PLOT NO: 1047, MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 9 MARCH 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 79.86 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 3.5 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

She was allotted the flat under the Social Worker category. The supporting document was a letter from a Rotary Club. The letter from PNK Venkatachalapathy, president of the Rotary Club of Oddachatram, dated 31 March 2008, states that “she is known to me as a social worker who is participating in social service activities of our Rotary Club at blood donation camps, free health checkup camps and other welfare activities. She has also been helping in providing several other basic amenities for the people surrounding the slum area for the past several years. I wish her every success to do more services to needy people in and around the area”.

D Yasodha

Congress MLA, Kancheepuram Congress MLA, Kancheepuram

FLAT NOS: A5, HIG, MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 19 DECEMBER 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 59.56 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 3 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

A certificate from the Chennai Municipal Councillor stating she has been an active social worker for the past 40 years actively involved in helping the poor in the area.

Poochi Murugan

Member of a DMK trade union

PLOT NO: A 11, THIRUVANMIYUR EXTENSION

DATE: 6 JUNE 2008

SIZE: 2,422 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 58.61 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 2.75 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

Though a member of a DMK trade union, he was allotted land under the Social Worker category. Has three plots in his name and one in his spouse’s name. He has not produced any supporting document about the social work he has done.

Bharati Thennarasu

Widow of Sivagangai politician Thennarasu

FLAT NOS: S7, THIRUVANMIYUR EXTN

DATE: 26 AUGUST 2008

SIZE: 3,879 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 79.13 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 3.75 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

She was allotted the plot under the Social Worker category. An RTI application revealed that she had not been engaged in any kind of social work that would make her eligible for this category.

P Moorthy

Madurai MLA

FLAT NOS: E2/6, MIG, MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 5 DECEMBER 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 72.5 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 4 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

Allotted under the Social Worker category on a certificate issued by the Lions Club. Owns several plots in his and his wife’s name.

N Soorya

Daughter of Brinda Chezhiyan and grand-daughter of Agriculture Minister Veerapandi Arumugam

FLAT NOS: B3/13, HIG, MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 3 JUNE 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 8.99 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 45-50 LAKH

VIOLATIONS

Like her mother, the 20-year-old was given a certificate of social work and domicile by the tehsildar of Salem, stating that she “is a wellknown social worker who is involved in many social welfare activities, such as national social service, participating in eye camp, blood donation and giving education to poor students”. The certificate was issued on 27 February 2008, the same day her mother got one. Both got adjoining flats.

Kith and Kin

Deepa

Daughter of Devaraj M, Private Secretary to the Chief Minister

FLAT NOS: 543, THIRUVANMIYUR, KAMARAJ NAGAR (PLOT ADJOINING SAIT’S AND SHANKAR’S)

DATE: 23 MAY 2008

SIZE: 4,466 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 1.08 CRORE

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: NA

VIOLATIONS

Allotted plot under the Social Worker category but there’s no evidence to back it. Constructing a three-storey building involving a cost beyond the family’s known sources of income. Her husband owns another property in his name. Her plot is adjacent to the plots of IGP-Intelligence Jaffar Sait and Durga Shankar, son of the CM’s secretary.

Naveenkumar

Son of P Muthuveeran, IAS, who was District Collector, Theni, and close to the Chief Minister

FLAT NOS: 541, HIG, THIRUVANMIYUR, KAMARAJ NAGAR

DATE: 27 JULY 2008

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 1.06 CRORE

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: NA

VIOLATIONS

Allotted flat under the Social Worker category. He works in a software company in Chennai and submitted a salary slip of Rs. 20,000 per month at the time of allotment. Now, he is constructing a fourstorey structure on the plot.

J Naveen Ibrahim

Son of SI Jaffar Ali, IPS (retd)

FLAT NOS: AI HIG MOGAPPAIR

DATE: 31 MARCH 2009

SIZE: NA

PRICE: Rs. 64.95 LAKH

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: Rs. 3.25 CRORE

VIOLATIONS

Allotted flat under the Social Worker category. Certificate issued relates to 1983, when he was a student. The college principal says he actively participated in “many social activities conducted by us. He continues to evince interest in social service activities”. Curiously, the EMI of Rs. 74,000 is almost double his monthly salary.

Durga Sankar

Son of Rajamanikkam, IAS, Secretary to Chief Minister

FLAT NOS: 538, THIRUVANMIYUR, KAMARAJ NAGAR (PLOT ADJOINING SAIT’S AND SHANKAR’S)

DATE: 28 MARCH 2008

SIZE: 2,450 SQ FT

PRICE: Rs. 1.12 CRORE

CURRENT MARKET PRICE: NA

VIOLATIONS

He is a businessman, but allotted the plot under the Social Worker category. He also submitted an affidavit that the plot would be used for residential purposes. But he violated the conditions and developed the property for commercial purposes.

The Others

M Ilamukil

IT Manager, DMK HQ, Chennai

VIOLATIONS

Allotted flat under the Social Worker category on a certificate issued by the Lions Club. The certificate states that he “is participating in social service activities of Lions Club at blood donation camp, free health camps for the past several years”.

Ilanthendral

Ilamukil’s sister

VIOLATIONS

Allotted HIG flat under the Social Worker category on the basis of a certificate issued by a panchayat, which is not valid.

N Kannabiran

Junior attendant at the Supreme Court

VIOLATIONS

Allotted flat under the Social Worker category. Kannabiran, a Delhi resident, was issued a salary certificate by the SC registrar for purchasing land in Tamil Nadu. He was allotted on the recommendation of his superior, who has close links with the DMK.

C Ganeshan and C Vinothan

PSOs, CM’s Security

VIOLATIONS

Allotted flats under the ‘unblemished’ government servants category. Documents reveal the Superintendent of Police, Security Branch, Chennai, issued vague conduct certificates after the duo were allotted the flats provisionally.

P Meena

W/O P Pandian, PSO, CM’s Security

VIOLATIONS

Allotted flat under the Social Worker category. She produced a letter from MS Velu of the Lions Club, who liberally issued certificates for sons and daughters of bureaucrats to help them avail of prime plots allotted by the TN Housing Board out of the government discretionary quota.

PHOTOS: THE HINDU, JEEMON JACOB

Reactions to Land Scam 3.0

D Yashoda, Congress MLA, Kancheepuram

“I have done a lot of work for Dalits throughout Tamil Nadu, especially in Sriperumbudur and Chennai. I have helped them in getting pattas for their land, recommending their names for loans from banks, distributing cycles to Dalits on the birthdays of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.”

Jaffar Sait, IPS, IG-Intelligence

“Government agencies have already probed the matter. I am being governed by the conduct rules, so I should not talk to you about the issue. It is advisable that you seek a response from the Tamil Nadu government. I would like to add that if any defamation or liability arises out of your article, necessary legal action would be taken.”

P Moorthy, Madurai MLA

“I don’t know much about the certificate, I think I got the plot because I’m an MLA. I have done a lot of work in uplifting the people in villages of my constituency. That amounts to social work. I don’t need a social work certificate from the Lions Club but my friends, partners and I took the certificate anyway. “

‘GDQ is a way of making you part of the syndicate’

BY JEEMON JACOB

C Umashanker

PHOTO: JEEMON JACOB

A1990 batch IAS officer, C Umashanker shot to fame during the AIADMK regime when he exposed a scam in the construction of sheds in a cremation ground under the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana when he was additional collector in Madurai. His brush with AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa’s partymen resulted in his transfer out of the district.

Later, when the DMK came to power, he was appointed managing director of the state-run Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu and put in charge of procuring colour television sets for free distribution to the poor in the state, in keeping with an election promise of the DMK. He was transferred with immediate effect after he exposed corporate fraud committed by the joint venture promoter ELNET Technologies Ltd.

Later, he was posted as managing director of the state-run Arasu Cable TV Corporation. In this capacity, he opposed the monopoly of Sumangali Corporation run by Kalanidhi Maran. He also took steps to nationalise Sumangali Cable Vision. By that time, Maran had a patch-up with the Karunanidhi family and Umashanker was transferred with immediate effect.

Later, the anti-corruption and vigilance department registered a case against him for disproportionate assets. The government suspended him for claiming fake caste certificate as a Dalit when he is a practising Christian.

Plots are allotted even without any formal applications. There is no transparency at all

He lodged a complaint with the National Backward Commission against his suspension and got a favourable order from the High Court. At present, he is managing director of Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation.

Umashanker was allotted a plot (under government order 2D 325) on 3 April 2008 at Thiruvanmiyur Extension when he was in charge of the free colour television for the poor programme. For this, he would have had to pay 55.12 lakh. He wrote to the chief minister that he could not afford to pay such a huge amount. Later, his allotment was cancelled without stating any reason.

Umashanker revealed he had an MIG flat in his name when the plot was allotted and he was not aware about the rule of Tamil Nadu Housing Board (TNHB) that he can’t claim a plot when he has another flat in his name.

It certainly seems commendable that Umashanker turned down a chance to own a plot in Thiruvanmiyur Extension, one of the poshest areas of the city. The plot is just 300 metres from the beach.

Though the entire colony has been parcelled out to those close to the ruling establishment, it is the nouveau riche and the industrialists who dream of owning a house in Thiruvanmiyur, where they can rub shoulders with former judges, bureaucrats and political power brokers. If and when the allottees decide to sell their plots, they can demand extremely high prices.

In a frank chat, Umashanker talks about how the government discretionary quota has been misused. Excerpts:

Why are bureaucrats, judges, former judges and politicians given housing plots in posh localities under government discretionary quota?

Who can refuse a good piece of land in Chennai city? It’s a way of rewarding people for good work done. No inquiry has been conducted in this matter so far. Discretionary quota is the prerogative of the government. After RTI came into existence, several activists are taking up the matter in court. Basically, there is no control mechanism or checks and balances. There is little transparency while awarding the GDQ — the plots are allotted without formal applications.

You were also allotted a plot in 2008 under the ‘unblemished government servant’ category. What happened to the allotment?

Yes, I was allotted a plot in Thiruvanmiyur Extension. Initial payment for the plot was Rs. 25 lakh. I never had that much money. So I requested the government to reduce the price. But there was no response. I did not want a house to compromise my integrity. So I never took possession. Later, in 2009, the government ordered a vigilance inquiry against me and cancelled the allotment. Frankly, I was not aware about the TNHB rules that bars a person having a plot, a flat or a house from claiming another plot.

Do you think the GDQ quota is a way of silencing people, buying them out?

Yes, it is a way of making you a part of the syndicate. Plots or flats are given to those civil servants, judges or relatives of the bureaucrats or politicians for complying with certain requirements. There is no procedure for IAS or IPS officers to get a land or plot or flat in a transparent manner. So everybody uses short cuts.

Edited, printed , published owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ # LIG-2 No 761,

HUDCO FIRST STAGE , OPP WATER WORKS , LAXMIKANTANAGAR , HEBBAL

,MYSURU – 570017 KARNATAKA INDIA Cell : 91 8970318202

WhatsApp 91 8970318202

Home page :

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https://diweekly.blogspot.com

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Press Silenced ?

DECCAN INQUIRER

Weekly e news paper

Editor: Nagaraja.M.R.. Vol.01....Issue.05............24/06/2020

Press / Journalist Silenced ?

From,

Nagaraja Mysuru Raghupathi ,

Editor , DALIT ONLINE & Deccan Inquirer,

# LIG 2 , No 761, HUDCO First Stage,

Laxmikantanagar , Hebbal ,

Mysuru – 570017.

To,

1. Honourable District Magistrate ,

Mysuru District ,

Mysuru – 570001

2. Honourable Police Commissioner

Mysuru.

3. Honourable Joint Director

Department of I & B , GOK

Mysuru

4. Honourable Director

Department of I & B , GOI

New Delhi.

Dear Sir ,

Subject : Web Paper Registration & Press Accreditation

Journalists are those who collect , analyze , report & publish news. As per law in India, Journalists are not granted any special rights or privileges and are on par with the Citizens of India. Every citizen of India has the right to question the government , public servants about their public duties. Journalists & citizens have the same , equal rights & responsibilities as per law. Paradox is those questioning citizens are silenced by authorities.

As per law in India , Digital News Papers are not registered. Since years our publication is not registered and even press accreditation is denied to us ( at the behest of powers that be / mafia ? ) , whereas even those journalists covering cookery , lottery , movies are given press accreditation. Press Accreditation is an administrative convenience mechanism by authorities giving access to journalists. If a Journalist or Citizen does not have press accreditation that does not entitle authorities to deny him access to information , news.

Hereby , I am once again submitting declaration about my web news paper publications and request you for officially noting it ( as registration is not legally possible ) and to issue me press accreditation.

Date: 21.06.2020 Thanking You,

Place: Mysuru Nagaraja M R.

Copies sent to :

1. Honourable Chief Justice of India , Supreme Court of India , New Delhi.

2. Honourable Chairman , National Human Rights Commission , New Dehi.

3. Honourable High Commissioner , OHCHR , United Nations , Geneva , Switzerland.

DECLARATION No.1

Name : ...........................NAGARAJA.M.R.

Address : ...................LIG-2 / 761 , HUDCO FIRST STAGE , OPP

WATER WORKS OFFICE , LAKSHMIKANTANAGAR , HEBBAL , MYSORE - 570017 Karnataka

Professional / Trade Title : DALIT ONLINE

Periodicity : WEEKLY

Circulation : FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION ON WEB

Donations : NOT ACCEPTED. Self financing . Never accepted any donations , subscriptions either for ourselves or on behalf of other organizations / individuals .

Monetary Gains : nil , never made any monetary gain by way of advertisements on my websites or web news paper or otherwise.

Owner/Editor/Printer/Publisher : NAGARAJA.M.R.

Nationality : INDIAN

Body Donation : Physical Body of Nagaraja M R , Editor , Dalit online is donated to JSS Medical College , Mysore ( Donation No. 167 dated 22 / 10 / 2003 ) , In case of either Unnatural death or Natural Death at the hands of criminal nexus , my body must be handed over to JSS Medical College , Mysore for the study purposes of medical students.

Eye Donation : Both EYES of Nagaraja M R , Editor , Dalit online are donated to Mysore Eye Bank , Mysore , In case of either Unnatural death or Natural Death at the hands of criminal nexus , my eyes must be handed over to Mysore Eye Bank , Mysore WITHIN 6 Hours for immediate eye transplantation to needy.

Home page :

http://eclarionofdalit.dalitonline.in/

Contact : editor.dalitonline@gmail.com , editor@dalitonline.in

UID Aadhaar No : 5703 5339 3479

Cell : 91 8970318202

It is the duty of Supreme Court of India to Protect , Guard the constitutional rights , fundamental rights of every Indian citizen . Since 25 years I am appealing to SCI about issues concerning public welfare , national security , etc and as a result suffering injustices , my constitutional rights , human rights are repeatedly violated but SCI is mum even when repeated appeals were made to it. Paradoxically , after these appeals for justice , I have suffered more injustices , attempts on my life were made , physically assaulted , livelihood / jobs were denied , news publication closed , press accreditation denied , received threatening calls , blank calls, even to date rough elements follow us , rough elements scout near home at mid night. Does not these indicate some ties between rough elements & SCI Judges ?

Public Interest Litigation is an appeal for justice to the courts , to redress the injustices meted out to the public. Individual cases of injustices pertaining to an individual are not covered under PIL, however an individual an activist who is fighting for public causes suffering injustices as a result of his struggle ,caused by powers that be to silence him can club his individual case under the public causes (PIL ) he is appealing.

Nowadays people of questionable character , integrity are being selected to public posts , end result is present day india. In the following web sites I have shown few actual cases of crimes by judges & police , just imagine what type of justice common man gets.

Traitors in Indian Judiciary & Police

https://www.scribd.com/document/329980170/Traitors-in-Judiciary-Police

Crimes by Khaki

https://www.scribd.com/document/334590032/Crimes-by-Khaki

Police show full bravery , courage , use full might of law while acting against innocents , commoners. Even takes suo motto action. Frequently crosses legal limits while acting against commoners like 3rd degree torture , arrest / search , seizure without warrant , arrest in mid night , etc . While they are supposed to take action against rich crooks , their own corrupt colleagues no suo motto action , delayed action inspite of complaint allowing time for rich crook to get anticipatory bail , no 3rd degree torture on him , no arrest , search , seizure without warrant. Where is the bravery , courage of police ?

Judges show their full wisdom , apply rigid law book while judging cases of commoners , take suo motto action where as cases involving rich crooks comes before them inspite of repeated PILs they don’t consider it , let alone take suo motto action. Judges make far fetched interpretations of law , ultimately benefitting the rich crook. Where is the wisdom of Judges ?

I ,NAGARAJA.M.R. hereby do declare that information given above are true to the best of my knowledge & belief. If i am repeatedly called to police station or else where for the sake of investigations , the losses i do incurr as a result like loss of wages , transportation , job , etc must be borne by the government. prevoiusly the police / IB personnel repeatedly called me the complainant (sufferer of injustices) to police station for questioning , but never called the guilty culprits , rich crooks , criminals even once to police station for questioning , as the culprits are high & mighty . this type of one sided questioning must not be done by police or investigating agencies . if anything untoward happens to me or to my family members like loss of job , meeting with hit & run accidents , loss of lives , death due to improper medical care , etc , the jurisdictional police together with above mentioned accussed public servants will be responsible for it. Even if criminal nexus levels fake charges , police file fake cases against me or my dependents to silence me , this complaint is & will be effective.

Powers that be , higher ups have referred all my previous cases to police although in most of the cases police don’t have jurisdiction over it. It sends a subtle message by police force to the complainant to keep silent . In the remaining cases which are under their jurisdiction police don’t act against higher ups , high & mighty. In such cases police lack practical powers , their hands are tied although they are honest. As a end result , police have repeatedly called me to police station number of times ( have never called guilty influential persons even once) took statement from me and closed the files. Hereby , I do make it clear the statements made by me in my original petitions , PILs , news papers , etc while I was in a free & fair atmosphere are TRUE , over rides , prevails over all the statements made by me before police earlier and which will be made by me in future before police.

If I or my family members or my dependents are denied our fundamental rights , human rights , denied proper medical care for ourselves , If anything untoward happens to me or to my dependents or to my family members - In such case Chief Justice of India together with the jurisdictional revenue & police officials will be responsible for it , in such case the government of india is liable to pay Rs. TWO crore as compensation to survivors of my family. if my whole family is eliminated by the criminal nexus ,then that compensation money must be donated to Indian Army Welfare Fund. Afterwards , the money must be recovered by GOI as land arrears from the salary , pension , property , etc of guilty police officials , Judges , public servants & Constitutional functionaries.

date : 21.06.2020..................………………..Your's sincerely,

place : India…………………………………...Nagaraja.M.R.

DECLARATION No.2

Name : ...........................NAGARAJA.M.R.

Address : ...................LIG-2 / 761 , HUDCO FIRST STAGE , OPP

WATER WORKS OFFICE , LAKSHMIKANTANAGAR , HEBBAL , MYSORE - 570017 Karnataka

Professional / Trade Title : DECCAN INQUIRER

Periodicity : WEEKLY

Circulation : FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION ON WEB

Donations : NOT ACCEPTED. Self financing . Never accepted any donations , subscriptions either for ourselves or on behalf of other organizations / individuals .

Monetary Gains : nil , never made any monetary gain by way of advertisements on my websites or web news paper or otherwise.

Owner/Editor/Printer/Publisher : NAGARAJA.M.R.

Nationality : INDIAN

Home page :

http://di.dalitonline.in ,

https://diweekly.blogspot.com

Contact :

editor@dalitonline.in , editor.dalitonline@gmail.com

UID Aadhaar No : 5703 5339 3479

Cell : 91 8970318202

Traitors in Indian Judiciary & Police

https://www.scribd.com/document/329980170/Traitors-in-Judiciary-Police

Crimes by Khaki

https://www.scribd.com/document/334590032/Crimes-by-Khaki

date : 21.06.2020..................………………..Your's sincerely,

place : India…………………………………...Nagaraja.M.R.

Edited, printed , published owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ # LIG-2 No 761,

HUDCO FIRST STAGE , OPP WATER WORKS , LAXMIKANTANAGAR , HEBBAL

,MYSURU – 570017 KARNATAKA INDIA Cell : 91 8970318202

WhatsApp 91 8970318202

Home page :

http://di.dalitonline.in

https://diweekly.blogspot.com

Contact : editor@dalitonline.in , editor.dalitonline@gmail.com

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Answer Honourable Home Minister

DECCAN INQUIRER - weekly e news paper

DECCAN INQUIRER

Weekly e news paper

Editor: Nagaraja.M.R.. Vol.01....Issue.04............17/06/2020

Editorial : Salutes to Indian Armed Forces

In the recent past , our soldiers sacrificed their lives near china border while protecting our motherland. Since independence our armed forces are protecting our country from enemy aggressions against formidable odds. We as citizens of india must raise above divisions of caste, religion, ideologies and must stand United behind our Soldiers and government. Since centuries Bharatha Khanda was looted by intruders, occupied my Muslim rulers , British, french, dutch, portuegues everybody taking advantage of our divisions. A divided house will never be strong & will never be respected by neighbours. UNITED WE WIN , DIVIDED WE LOOSE. We are all Indians.

We salute you our brave Soldiers. Jai Hind. Vande Mataram.

Your's Sincerely

NAGARAJA Mysuru Raghupathi

#BlackLivesMatter George Floyd , Police Torture in India

RTI Questions to Honourable Union Home Minister and Union Home Secretary GOI

RTI Application ref : MHOME/R/E/20/02905

Police Torture Chambers :

https://dalit-online.blogspot.com/2019/07/torture-chambers.html?m=1

Main A :

1.how many CBI officials , state police officials are facing

charges of corruption , 3rd degree torture , lock-up/encounter deaths

, rapes , fake cases , etc ?

2.how you are monitoring the ever increasing wealth of corrupt police

officials?

3.how many officials from the ranks of constable to DGP have amassed

illegal wealth?

4.what action you have taken in these cases ? have you got

reinvestigated all the cases handled by tainted police?

5.how many policemen have been awarded death penalty & hanged till

death , for cold blooded murders in the form of lock-up deaths /

encounter deaths ?

6.why DGP of Karnataka is not registering my complaint dt 10/12/2004 ,

subsequent police complaints ?

is it because rich & mighty are involved ?

7.e - voice is ready to bring to book corrupt police officials subject to

conditions, are you ready ?

8.how many police personnel are charged with violations of people's

human rights & fundamental rights ?

9.how many STF police deployed to nab veerappan were themselves

charged with theft of forest wealth?

10.how you are ensuring the safety , health , food , living space of

inmates in jails?

11.how you are ensuring the medical care , health of prisoners in

hospitals & mental asylums?

12.How you are ensuring the safety , health , food , living space of

inmates in juvenile homes ?

Main B :

. Why was Judge JT Utpat, Judge Loya’s predecessor in hearing the case, transferred from hearing the case despite a 2012 Supreme Court order specifying that the same judge should hear the matter from start to finish?

2. Were Bombay High Court Chief Justice Mohit Shah or the principal accused Amit Shah aware of any alleged inducements offered to Judge Loya to ensure a favourable judgment in the case?

3. Does Justice Mohit Shah deny the allegation by Judge Loya’s sister Anuradha Biyani, that he himself made an offer of Rs 100 crore in return for a favourable judgment?

4. Who made the arrangements for Judge Loya’s transportation to Dande Hospital on the night of his death, and why was this not in a vehicle from the government guest house or an ambulance?

5. Do Dande Hospital and/or Meditrina Hospital have records indicating what medication was provided to Judge Loya while in their care, and who was with him at the time?

6. What was the time of Judge Loya’s death according to the records of Meditrina Hospital and when do call records show this was intimated to Judge Loya’s family? Did the death occur at 6:15 am or before 5 am on 1 December 2014, or did it in fact occur before midnight?

7. In what circumstances can a person die of “coronary artery insufficiency”? Is it possible for a person in good physical health without any cardiac history or other markers of this condition, experience “coronary artery insufficiency” and lose their life

8. Why was a post-mortem report ordered into Judge Loya’s death when no panchnama or FIR was filed terming it a suspicious death, and why was Judge Loya’s family not informed about the performance of a post-mortem? Alternatively, were any reasons for performance of post-mortem report recorded, where were these recorded and who recorded them?

9. Who signed the post-mortem report pages as “maiyatacha chulatbhau” (ie paternal cousin brother of the deceased) when no relation of Judge Loya was present in Nagpur? Does the countersignatory, the senior police inspector of Sadar police station, recollect who this was?

10. What was Ishwar Baheti’s relationship with the deceased and on what basis was he coordinating the funeral arrangements for Judge Loya, including contacting the family? Why was Judge Loya’s phone returned to the family by Mr Baheti rather than the police? Alternatively, did the police ask Mr Baheti to return the phone to Judge Loya’s family?

11. Does Judge Loya’s family still have the allegedly bloodstained shirt worn by Judge Loya at the time of death which the post-mortem report claims was dry?

12. Is it true that the CBI was only given 15 minutes to argue against the discharge of Amit Shah in subsequent hearings of the case before Judge Loya’s successor in hearing the case, Judge Gosavi, as against three days for the defence lawyers?

13. Who made the decision to announce MS Dhoni’s retirement from test cricket on 30 December 2014? Was this decided by the player or the BCCI and did any external source suggest the specific date?

14. Sohrabuddin/Tulsirram Prajapati fake encounter case was transferred from Gujarat to CBI court, Mumbai by the Supreme Court in the year 2012, directing that same judge will preside over the trial from start to finish. Judge Utpat was designated as special CBI Judge in Mumbai. He allegedly reprimanded the accused for not appearing in his court and fixed the case for June 26, 2014. A day before, on June 25, 2014, he was abruptly transferred. Judge B.H. Loya was posted in his place. Judge Loya died in suspicious circumstances on November 30, 2014. Post that, shri Amit Shah has been since discharged and CBI refused to file an appeal against the order of the discharge.

15. Sister of Judge Loya gave an interview to a media house on November 21, 2017, to allege that he was being offered a Rs 100-crore bribe plus residential flat/property in Mumbai for delivering a verdict in favour of the accused by a former chief justice.

16. Judge Loya was stated to have died on account of heart attack. ECG and histopathology report of Judge Loya showed no evidence of heart attack. On the contrary, Dr R.K. Sharma, ex-head of Forensics & Toxicology at AIIMS stated that there was no evidence of heart attack and there was evidence of ‘possible trauma to the brain’.

17. Judge Loya’s security was withdrawn on November 24, 2014 in Mumbai and he was not provided any security as he travelled from Mumbai to Nagpur, where he died on November 30, 2014.

18. There is no travel record of Judge Loya travelling by train from Mumbai to Nagpur.

19. There is no entry or record of Judge Loya having stayed in the occupancy register of Ravi Bhavan, Nagpur on November 30, 2014. Fifteen employees posted in Ravi Bhavan, Nagpur did not even recall that Judge Loya ever stayed in Ravi Bhavan.

20. There was no reason for three judges to sleep in a room with only two beds when adjoining rooms were empty. Why did the 15 members of the staff then not know either about the stay or the heart attack? Why were no entries made in the occupancy register?

21. Family of Judge Loya has publicaly stated that clothes on his dead body had blood stains, especially near the neck area.

22. Post-mortem of Judge Loya was conducted on December 1, 2014 without information and consent of any immediate family members. There were discrepancies even in recording of Judge Loya’s name in post-mortem report.

23. Two of the other colleagues of Judge Loya, who were allegedly informed about the pressure being put on him, also died under suspicious circumstances. One associate, advocate Khandalkar’s body was found in district court, Nagpur after alleged fall from the eighth story on November 29, 2015. (November 28, 2015 was closed court work and he was missing for two days). Second associate, retired Judge Thombre died in suspicious circumstances while travelling in train from Nagpur to Bangalore on May 16, 2016. There is no FIR or an investigation in these deaths till date. One advocate Satish Uke, raising the issue narrowly escaped death when on July 8, 2016, heavy weight iron material of 5,000 kgs fell on his office.

24. What action taken against witnesses in sohrabuddin fake encounter case , ishrath jahan & tulsi ram prajapati fake encounter cases , haren pandya murder case who turned hostile after years ?

25. What action taken against police officials in sohrabuddin fake encounter case , ishrath jahan & tulsi ram prajapati fake encounter cases , haren pandya murder case who turned hostile changed prosecution after years and at the end preferred not to appeal in higher court ?

Main C :

1. Details of action taken against SCI judges Ranjan Gogoi, swatantra kumar , Ganguly , Judges involved in roost resort sex scandal on charges of sexual harassment against women. If not reasons for it. Please give me FIR number of each case.

2. List of public servants present and past MPs , IAS & IPS officers, etc with citizenship of foreign countries in addition to indian citizenship. Also give me list of public servants with spouses of foreign origin.

3. Details of action taken against SCI judge deepak mishra in medical college case , kalikho pul death statement. President of India Pranab mukherjee was also accused by kalikho pul. If not reasons for it.

4. Details of our present MPs , IAS & IPS officers facing criminal charges .

5. Details of action taken regarding charges made by CBI director Alok verma against his deputy Rakesh Asthana and vice versa. If not reasons for it.

6. Details of action taken against police who are aiding underworld don dawood ibrahim. If not reasons for it.

7. Details of action taken against reliance industries in relation to document leak in power , petroleum , coal ministries. If not reasons for it.

8. Details of action taken against journalists, lobbyists involved in Radia tape. If not reasons for it.

9. Does Smt.Sonia Gandhi & Shri.Rahul Gandhi have citizenship of foreign countries in addition to indian citizenship. Details please.

10. Does delhi police use third degree torture against detainees.

11. Details of action taken against public servants , ministers who aided terrorism at the expense of public exchequer. If not reasons for it.

Please read documents at following web pages and answer :

https://www.scribd.com/document/402134326/INTERROGATE-Judges-Police , https://www.scribd.com/document/399783839/India-Sponsored-Terrorists , https://www.scribd.com/document/412164943/CJI-in-Jail

The murders of Phanidhar Borah-George Floyd and us

— by Asish Gupta

In recent times, a surge in a wave of protest shook the United States of America against the killing of George-Floyd, an African-American citizen, by the US police. The democrats from all over the world have sympathised with this protest. At about the same time Phanidhar Borah died in Jajori in Nagaon district of Assam as a result of police torture. Two constables of Jajori police station beat up Phanidhar after some verbal altercation. He was initially admitted in a local hospital in Nagaon with severe injury and was later transferred to Guwahati Medical College Hospital in critical condition. He died there on the 4th of June. Hardly hundreds and thousands of people in Jajori have protested against this killing. Two people die in two parts of the world, and the killers are people belonging to the same profession. However, in one case, the protest has spanned continents, and in another, it is somewhat muted. The father of a girl, 55-year-old Phanidhar Borah, was beaten to death by two policemen and people’s protests remained confined only to Jajori. It may also be possible that many people in areas adjacent to Jajori or other parts of Nagaon district might have voiced their anger in the social media against the murder of George Floyd. Still, alas, even they might have missed the incidence of Borah.

This contrast in the extent of protests with a change in place, time or personalities involved is nothing new all over the world and especially in India. The people of this country witnessed several struggles during the two-hundred-year of the British rule and also in independent India, and endured the brutal tyranny of foreign and Indian rulers. The ultimate horror of police brutality was witnessed by the people of India decades ago. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, no list of countless people crippled by police brutality can be found as it has become a daily occurrence. There is no need to look too far back. During the ongoing lockdown, at least 16 very ordinary people have died due to police torture or because of police firings. The people of this country has restricted their protests by circulating some viral video clippings or commenting on social media. One such video in which a policeman knelt on the neck of Mahesh Kumar Prajapat in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, has gone viral. After watching the clip, some of us have felt that Mahesh Kumar is lucky to escape death while George Floyd died under similar treatment by the police in Minnesota, USA. However, forget about a storm, not even a gentle breeze of protest took place.

In recent India when and where the storm of protests will hit is mainly determined by a combination of place, time and persons involved. One such protest took place in December 2012 and in the days that followed after the rape and death of Nirbhaya. The site of the protest was the capital of the country, Delhi and the time was 15 months before the LokSabha elections. It was by that time the rightists, keeping an eye on the forthcoming election, has entered the election arena with all their might to seize power. The person in this context is the only daughter of a middle-class family. The people of the country, mainly the upper and middle classes, roared against the rape and brutal murder along with coverage from the media. The water flowed far and wide. The central government enacted new laws against rape and murder. The convicts were punished after going through various ups and downs of the judicial system, and four of them were hanged. Nirbhaya’s mother went to sleep in peace. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 38,947 rapes in 2016, 32,559 in 2017 and 33,977 in 2018. However, such storm of protest against these rape incidences is not raging. This report is not about rape and murder. I mentioned this Nirbhaya incidence only to bring out the nature and the backdrop of the protest movement.

The character of protest in the world’s largest parliamentary democracy is extremely narrow in the case of deaths due to police torture. Isolated demonstrations against police brutality in the area of the deceased or near the police station or at most in the district in which the deceased lived may take place. However, after that, the case would be hushed up, andthe topicwould go to oblivion. Only if there is an active,democratic rights organisation present in that locality, the matter will reach the court. But on the whole, the people of the country or the states concerned, are indifferent to death in police custody. We speak out against the decades-long oppression of people of African origin in the United States and the newspapers cover these protests with photographs and articles covering several pages. On the contrary, the news of the murder of Phanidhar Borah of Assam is captured in a single/double column of a regional newspaper.

We have come across reports on the parliamentary leftists protesting against the assassination of George Floyd with placards in remote villages or towns of this country. But we do not find them taking up protest marches against the hundreds of people dying in the police custody in this country. Of course, there is a problem. In a parliamentary democracy, active political parties have the opportunity to share power at various levels of governance. For example, leftists were/are in control in states like West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala. In all these three states, there have been several deaths in police custody during their rule, but the Left Front governments have not taken any step that could set a new precedent. Same is the case with any other political parties present in electoral politics. As a result, the parliamentary political parties cannot form any significant, broad-based movement against death in police custody. Most of the people of the country are organised under the umbrella of parliamentary politics.And that is why thousands of people cannot take to the streets against police brutality and death in custody in India.

Replying to a question in the LokSabha on the 16thof July, 2019, G Kishan Reddy, Minister of State for Home Affairs, said, “Cases of deaths in police custody registered by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in 2018-19 were 136 and of those in judicial custody, 1797. The corresponding number of cases involving alleged deaths in police custody and judicial custody in 2017-18 were 146 and 1636 respectively and in 2016-17, 145 and 1616 respectively.” The NHRC had recommended disciplinary actionagainst erring twenty government officials over the death of a detainee in custody in these three years. Earlier, a report by Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organisation, published on the 19thof December, 2016, said that 591 people had died in police custody between 2010 and 2015. In almost all cases, no erring police officer has been convicted. In nearly all cases, the cause of death was shown to be suicide, illness or natural death. Lawsuits have been filed against police personnel in only 33 of these cases.

In a democratic country, the growing death toll from ever-increasing incidents of rape-murder, torture in police and prison custody will be prolonged, but the storm of protest will not rise! We would be happy and thrilled to see a photograph of Miami police kneeling and confessing to George Floyd’s murder, but we will not learn from that photo! We will never conclude that there is no ideological difference between the police in Minnesota, USA and the police in Jajori, Assam! All of them are basically the protectors of the hegemony and the ruling class.

Edited, printed , published owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ # LIG-2 No 761,

HUDCO FIRST STAGE , OPP WATER WORKS , LAXMIKANTANAGAR , HEBBAL

,MYSURU – 570017 KARNATAKA INDIA Cell : 91 8970318202

WhatsApp 91 8970318202

Home page :

http://di.dalitonline.in

https://diweekly.blogspot.com

Contact : editor@dalitonline.in , editor.dalitonline@gmail.com

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Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Erratic Justice

DECCAN INQUIRER

Weekly e news paper

Editor: Nagaraja.M.R.. Vol.01....Issue.03............10/06/2020

The erratic idea of justice by the Apex Court

- Gitanjali Kapur

I embarked upon the legal profession with utmost fervor and zest, leaving behind a lucrative job in the finance sector for the unnerving world of courtroom drama.

The fire in me knew no bounds as I made my way through the myriad courtroom corridors in Delhi, meandering into the many facets of litigation. There is a certain allure to the profession of litigation that made me leave the cocoon of a decent corporate salary and plunge into the unknown contours of court life. The magnetism of serving the larger good has attracted many to join the profession, and I was no different.

It was not long before I found myself submerged in the bandwagon of the black robe tribe, and I got accustomed to the arbitrary idea of justice. After a few years in practice, one realizes that the Court is not the pedestal of good, but rather a collection of fallible humans.

As lawyers, we introspect about the personality of a judge, his background, his experiences, and his many aspects to try and gauge the outcome of our case. We often find ourselves muddled over the reasoning a court has given in refusing relief to our clients. We moan over the judge defying logic and the same becomes our daily corridor tattle. We sweat in the labor of our effort and we hope that our client will be graced with a better judge once we appeal.

One soon realizes that the reality of the profession is the endless limitation to justice. Procedural delays and nepotism become our daily battles and yet we manage to keep the love for the profession alive, despite its shortcomings.

As a lawyer, the Supreme Court is my ultimate beam of hope that makes me motivated in the profession despite its imperfections. With its unparallel gamut of powers in the guise of Article 32, 142, 144 etc., the Apex Court epitomizes the ideal of justice. One knows that the powers that the Supreme Court possesses is not just to do justice, but also command the same from governments and authorities. The distinctive powers of the Supreme Court make it the most imperative body to ignite optimism in lawyers as well as litigants.

However, as a young lawyer, I am quite alarmed at the way the judiciary is losing its lustre by making the common man question its misplaced priorities. I do not wish to take away from the many historic and unprecedented judgments that have been delivered by the Apex Court recently.

However, at times one wonders how what is obvious to a common reasonable man is the antitheses of logic to the Apex court. The recent migrant issue is an example of how the judiciary has thwarted the faith we have in our courts and has made us question the erratic notions of justice.

In the past few years, the Supreme Court has found it fit to intervene and give directions to citizens to stand for the national anthem in movie halls. The Supreme Court has treated a sexual harassment allegation against a judge as a matter of national importance. The Apex Court has also deemed it fit to order an SIT probe into allegations of wife-swapping activities in the Navy. In fact, the Supreme Court has in 2019 passed an order preventing bird feeding from balconies in Mumbai as the same caused nuisance to residents.

There is a plethora of cases where the Supreme Court has intervened to mitigate any kind of discomfort. even if it is for a small section of the society. To my understanding, all of the above represent less dire circumstances than the one faced by the migrants during the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis.

One would have hoped that the Supreme Court would have taken suo motu cognizance of the plight of the migrant workers earlier, considering their alarming displacement and the delayed response of the government. However, to the utter disbelief of the concerned citizens as well as the senior members of the Bar, the Supreme Court washed its hands off perhaps one of the most glaring humanitarian crises in recent times in our country. When one juxtaposes this refusal to intervene with some previous orders of the Supreme Court in less pressing circumstances, one does feel disconsolate.

From the mundane corporate world of high-rise buildings, the world of litigation to me seemed to be a promise of adventure and anticipation. But just like my wardrobe inadvertently changed from bright colors to dull hues, my ardor for the profession is slowly making way for somber cynicism. While I have understood the nuances of the practice and slowly gotten accustomed to the incalculable actions of the Courts, I cannot fathom the blatant ignorance of the custodian of our constitutional values to the plight of the migrants.

The Supreme Court is a reminder to all of us as lawyers that we are officers of the Court and the torchbearers of an institution which has the power to transform lives and alleviate suffering. As lawyers, we often get entangled in our cases, and we lose sight of the purpose of the profession. The Supreme Court is a symbol of the ethos of the legal profession and a reminder of the higher values of the Constitution. I only hope that the Supreme Court reclaims itself as the model establishment for justice and the shining armor of hope it was always meant to be.

Edited, printed , published owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ # LIG-2 No 761,

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Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Reliance Jio illegal ?

DECCAN INQUIRER

Weekly e news paper

Editor: Nagaraja.M.R.. Vol.01....Issue.02............03/06/2020

PIL - Reliance Group Scams

https://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/pil---reliance-scams

License to Reliance Jio Illegal?

A Call for Review: Supreme Court’s Decision on Reliance Jio Perspectives

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

The Supreme Court has ignored evidence of apparent forgery and auction-rigging while dismissing a petition seeking to quash the government's decision permitting Reliance Jio to provide voice telephone services over fourth-generation spectrum. The company, headed by India's richest man, has also failed to meet its roll-out obligations. The apex court should review its decision.

The writer acknowledges research and writing assistance by Abir Dasgupta, Honi Joshi, Natasha Bhide and Mugdha Kinjawadekar.

The 8 April decision of the Supreme Court to dismiss a petition (Business Today 2016) questioning the manner in which Reliance Jio (RJio) obtained a licence to provide a range of mobile voice services ignores evidence relating to criminal forgery of a bank document and rigging of auction procedures (Centre for Public Interest Litigation v Union of India 2016). The country’s highest court also chose not to take into account the failure of the company, headed by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani and which has reportedly invested a huge ₹1,50,000 crore in this venture, to adhere to contractual obligations relating to rolling out its services (DNA 2016). The verdict by a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A K Sikri and R Banumathi needs review given the information that is now available in the public domain.

A public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan in May 2014 had argued that a kind of spectrum called broadband wireless access spectrum was acquired by RJio in 2010 using questionable means, by allegedly rigging the auction for it and by using a front company. The petition also argued that RJio had acquired a licence in March 2013 to offer voice telephony using the spectrum it had won in the 2010 auction without paying the amount it should have. Bhushan also requested an order from the Supreme Court directing the Department of Telecommunications (DOT), which is under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, to levy on RJio spectrum usage charges (SUC) at par with other operators providing voice telephony. Finally, the petition also sought a court monitored investigation into the decision of the government to grant the licence to RJio.

Incidentally, a draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, a constitutional authority mandated to oversee public finances, had found that a so-called front company, Infotel Broadband Services Private Limited (IBSPL), that had won the spectrum in the auction and which had subsequently been acquired by RJio, had used a forged document, a bank guarantee given by Axis Bank (BGR 2014; Majumdar 2014; Guha Thakurta 2016a). That is a criminal offence. However, the Supreme Court did not consider this as evidence of the auction being rigged and stated that it was “unnecessary to delve into” the subject as the bench felt that the auction of spectrum was not the subject matter of the dispute and was never questioned by anybody.

The Supreme Court bench disregarded CAG’s claims that the amount paid by RJio for its licence was much lower than what it should have been and declared that the grant of the licence was valid and legal. The Court held that CAG committed an error in forming its opinion though the bench heard neither the CAG nor the Director General of Audit (Post and Telecommunication) who prepared the draft audit report. On the issue of the company paying a lower SUC leading to loss of revenue to the exchequer, the Court chose not to act and instead left the matter to the government (in this case, the DOT).

The Background

Mobile phones communicate with one another by using electromagnetic waves of radio frequencies (RF) that lie in the range of 3 kHz (kilohertz) to 300 GHz (gigahertz). Mobile service providers (MSPs), such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, build and maintain networks through which these electromagnetic waves travel. To do this, they are allocated specific blocks of frequencies (ranging in size from 5 MHz (megahertz) to 20 MHz typically) in the RF range by the government (that is, the DoT) within which they are permitted to operate. This allocation of spectrum takes place by means of a public auction where competing MSPs bid for the rights to control frequency blocks. Batches of spectrum, that is, previously unallocated frequency ranges (as and when these become available) are periodically auctioned by the DOT which sets rules and conditions for the use of spectrum.

The country is divided into 22 administrative areas known as “telecom circles” or “service areas.” These include circles in three metropolitan areas—Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata—besides larger states (that are circles on their own) and groups of small states clubbed together into single circles. The spectrum blocks that are sold to MSPs are sold separately for each circle. For a company to provide pan-India services, it needs to buy spectrum blocks in each of the 22 circles.

On 25 February 2010, the DoT announced an auction of spectrum for MSPs to provide services using third and fourth generation (3G and 4G) technologies. The notice inviting applications (NIA) which announced the auction offered three or four blocks in each circle (depending on availability) for 3G services and two blocks in each circle for 4G services for MSPs to bid on. The 3G blocks were in the 2.1 MHz band and the 4G blocks were in the 2.3 MHz band of spectrum. The 3G blocks came in the form of two units of 5 MHz in each block, one unit for the “uplink” (the connection from a phone to a server) and the other unit for the “downlink” (the reverse connection from a server to a phone). The deployment of 3G technology demanded this kind of separation of the frequencies used for connections in opposite directions. The 3G blocks were priced at a “reserve price,” a minimum price that the government had determined, of ₹3,500 crore. The 4G blocks came in the form of single units of unpaired 20 MHz in each block, since 4G technology permits connections in both directions to take place in the same frequency range. The reserve price for each of the 4G blocks was ₹1,750 crore.

The NIA specified the criteria that would make a company eligible to participate in the auction. At that time, telecom companies operating in India could get three kinds of licences, each permitting a different kind of activity. A Cellular Mobile Telephone Services (CMTS) licence permitted a company to offer voice calls—the usual variety of mobile phone calls and text messaging. An internet service provider (ISP) licence permitted a company to provide internet services, both wireless and through fixed lines. A Unified Access Services (UAS) licence combined the possibilities of the CMTS/ISP licences, permitting the company to offer both voice calls as well as internet services. Under the terms of the NIA, a company holding any of these three kinds of licences could participate in the auction. Companies that did not hold any of these licences but committed themselves to obtain the necessary licences after the auction could also participate. Even foreign companies that were willing to incorporate Indian subsidiaries after the auction were allowed to participate.

The NIA also specified what the spectrum that was being sold could be used for. The 3G spectrum could be used for any purpose—voice calls or internet (mobile data)/videos. The 4G spectrum of a type known as broadband wireless access (BWA) could only be used for providing mobile data/videos.

The BWA/4G auction took place in May–June 2010. With virtually every Indian ISP being permitted to bid, a small and unheard-of company called IBSPL turned out to be the big winner of the 4G auction, successfully bidding for one block in each of the 22 telecom circles. For this, it bid a total amount of ₹12,847.44 crore. The remaining blocks were shared between five Indian/foreign companies—Bharti Airtel (four circles), Aircel (eight circles), Qualcomm (four circles), Tikona (five circles) and Augere (one circle). Immediately after the auction, IBSPL was sold to Reliance, and three years later it was renamed Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. Evidence in the public domain suggested that IBSPL had apparently forged a crucial bank document to participate in the auction, that the BWA/4G auction was allegedly rigged, and that IBSPL acted as a front company for Reliance Industries Limited, the single biggest private corporate entity in the country.

What Was IBSPL?

IBSPL, incorporated in February 2007 and granted a pan-India ISP licence in November 2007, was ranked 150th in the list of ISPs by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) at the time of the auction. It had a paid-up capital—the amount of the company’s capital that had been funded by its shareholders—of ₹2.51 crore, a net worth of ₹2.49 crore, and just a single leased line client from which it earned ₹14.78 lakh. It had no more than ₹18 lakh in the bank, of which ₹11 lakh had been paid to banks for a “bank guarantee”—a security of sorts—that it had deposited with the DoT for the grant of its ISP licence (Guha Thakurta 2015; Guha Thakurta and Ghatak 2016).

The company that promoted IBSPL, Infotel Digicom Private Limited (IDPL), had an equity capital of ₹6 lakh and a net worth of ₹8.55 lakh at the end of the financial year 2008–09. IDPL held no fixed assets and earned revenue of ₹2.59 crore primarily in the form of “other income” and made a net profit of ₹42.80 lakh in 2009–10. According to IDPL’s audited accounts, it gave 100% margin money in the form of a fixed deposit of ₹25 lakh as security against issuance of a bank guarantee for ₹25 lakh as of 31 March 2010 (Guha Thakurta and Ghatak 2016).

IDPL was promoted by Anant Nahata—the son of Mahendra Nahata, who is the promotor of Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited (HFCL), a manufacturer of telecom products and provider of telecom services. HFCL had first been noticed in 1995 when it had bid a staggering sum of ₹85,000 crore to provide second generation (2G) mobile services in nine circles. At the time, it had failed to deposit the amount. Interestingly, HFCL also came in the limelight in 2011 when it was alleged that Datacom, a company owned jointly by Videocon and HFCL had been one of the prime beneficiaries of what has come to be known as the 2G scam—the allotment of 2G spectrum during the period when the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s Andimuthu Raja was the union communications minister (Guha Thakurta 2015)

Forgery in Bank Guarantee?

To participate in the auction, the DoT needed all aspiring companies to deposit a sum of money known as an “earnest money deposit” to demonstrate their commitment to bidding in the auction. This amount was set at ₹252.5 crore for pan-India spectrum. Despite its lack of financial muscle, IBSPL was able to furnish the required amount. It did so in the form of a bank guarantee from Axis Bank of the same amount (Jain 2015).

A draft report of the CAG which leaked to the media in July 2014 had examined the bank guarantee that IBSPL had submitted and found that it seemed to have been tampered with (see scanned extracts from draft report and the copy of the bank guarantee). The name of the beneficiary—that is, IBSPL—had been written by hand in ink on the body of the bank guarantee document after erasing the name of the actual beneficiary that was written earlier. This could have attracted criminal prosecution. The draft report also pointed out that no disclosure had been made of any margin money paid for the bank guarantee in IBSPL’s accounts for 2008–09 and 2009–10. All the evidence pointed to the bank guarantee having been facilitated by another company, a fact that IBSPL failed to disclose. This detail was omitted from the final version of the CAG report (2015) that was tabled in Parliament on 8 May 2015 (Guha Thakurta 2015).

Scanned Extracts from Draft CAG Report

Rigged Auction

This questionable bank guarantee was sufficient for IBSPL, a tiny ISP, to participate in the auction. And it thoroughly dominated the final auction. The auction was conducted electronically over 16 days beginning 24 May 2010, and at the end IBSPL acquired 20 MHz BWA spectrum for all 22 telecom circles in India at a final price of ₹12,847.44 crore, 5,000 times its net worth. Major players such as Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications, Tata Communications (both participating in the auction through sponsored subsidiaries), Vodafone Essar and Idea had all dropped out of the auction midway apparently due to the high prices (Guha Thakurta 2015).

IBSPL, with its negligible net worth, was allowed to proceed by the government even as the bid amounts rose. There was no intervention to investigate or to stop the auction by either the auctioneer or DoT or an inter-ministerial committee (IMC), comprising officials from other government departments such as the Departments of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Information Technology, and Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, which had been set up to monitor the auctions (Guha Thakurta 2015).

The BWA/4G auction ended on 11 June 2010 after 117 rounds of bidding. The provisional results recommended by the IMC were to be approved by a committee of secretaries to the Government of India headed by the cabinet secretary and including the finance secretary, the secretary to the now-defunct Planning Commission and the secretary of the DoT. The provisional results were declared, however, on the afternoon of 11 June with the approval of the IMC, indicating IBSPL as the winner. The final CAG report detailed how when the committee of secretaries met on 12 June to consider the IMC’s recommendations for approval of the provisional results, it was informed that the “auctioneer was satisfied with the conduct of the auction process.” The IMC reiterated that “the electronic auction system was not compromised from both security and competition aspects and there was no indication of any collusive and coordinated bidding” (Guha Thakurta 2015).

An independent analysis of the 3G and BWA auction which is available with this author revealed the highly aggressive bidding behaviour of IBSPL which should have raised multiple red flags with the IMC. Figure 1 (p 35) depicts the 3G auction in which IBSPL did not take part and the blocks up for grabs were shared between companies that had made full disclosures and is representative of a fair and transparently conducted auction.

Figure 1: Service Areas Won in the 3G Auction

Here, Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel, Aircel and Idea bid on blocks in all the service areas and each won a certain share. When the bids for the blocks won are scrutinised, it reveals that each company focused on specific areas where it could reasonably expect market conditions to be such that introducing 3G services made financial sense. This is also reflected in the eligibility points that each company held over the course of the auction.

Eligibility points are a mechanism for monitoring the bids of different parties in an auction. Each starts off with a certain number which determines how many blocks it is eligible to bid for. As bids are made over several rounds of the auction, the bidders begin to lose eligibility points if they do not bid for all the possible blocks. The auction procedures require that a certain level of eligibility points be maintained in the early stages of the auction, after which companies can focus on the blocks they intend to win. As their focus on certain areas increased, their bidding for other areas dropped off and thus their eligibility points also dropped. This aspect is depicted in Figure 2 (p 36).

Figure 2: Eligibility Points of the Bidders in the 3G Auction

4G/BWA Spectrum Auction

Despite its low net worth, IBSPL was the only company which bid the reserve price of ₹ 1,750 crore for each and every service area in the first round of bidding on the first day of the BWA auction. It was the provisional winner, ranked first, in almost every round of bidding in all service areas. Despite being the smallest of the eight bidders which started the auction with 350 eligibility points in the first round, it was the only bidder that ended with all 350 points in the final round. It even surpassed the bidding requirements specified by the auctioneer, maintaining 100% bidding activity across all rounds surpassing the required 80–90% prescribed for the first 81 rounds. It was the only bidder that raised a bid or maintained the bid of the previous round in 2,564 rounds (99.61%) of the 2,584 rounds of the auction. Its closest competitor, Aircel, by way of contrast, bid only during 607 rounds (24%), followed by Bharti Airtel (579 rounds) and Qualcomm (538 rounds). IBSPL was ranked second only in one round, and did not bid in eight. The daily bids are summarised in Table 1 (p 37). At the end, IBSPL ended up winning blocks in every service area (Figure 3, p 36).

Figure 3: Service Areas Won in the BWA/4G Auction

Tellingly, whereas larger bidders like Bharti Airtel, Aircel and Qualcomm concentrated their bids largely in Category ‘A’ service areas in the large metropolitan cities, keeping in mind higher per capita incomes, higher literacy rates and other factors that indicated the likelihood of the area being a good market for 4G data services, IBSPL bid equally without discrimination on all categories of service areas including Categories ‘B’ and ‘C’ areas which were semi-urban and rural areas with much lower smartphone ownership and internet penetration. These reflect in the trend of eligibility points that each company held as the bidding proceeded (Figure 4, p 38).

Figure 4: Eligibility Points for Bidders in the BWA/4G Auction

For a company like IBSPL with no apparent known sources of finance, these astronomical bids showed clearly that it had some kind of financial backing that it had not declared. The IMC was supposedly monitoring the auction and producing a daily report. How a small company was able to bid huge amounts unnoticed is a mystery that the auctioneers and members of the IMC must uncloak.

On 11 June 2010, while the day’s auction ended in the forenoon, IBSPL called an extraordinary general meeting of its shareholders at short notice, where it raised its authorised share capital 2,000 times, from ₹3 crore to ₹6,000 crore, by issuing 75% of its shares to Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a listed company and India’s single biggest private corporate entity, making itself a subsidiary of the latter. These events took place in full public view. On 10 June, a front-page report in the Economic Times mentioned that IBSPL could be taken over by RIL, with all-India 4G spectrum prices touching ₹12,257 crore (Guha Thakurta and Ghatak 2016). The draft CAG report found that this disclosure had an immediate impact on the auction process as Bharti Airtel, which was fiercely competing with IBSPL and Qualcomm for blocks in the Delhi and Mumbai metropolitan circles, withdrew from the auction within hours.

The draft CAG report noted that Anant Nahata had confirmed on television on 11 June that talks were on with the Reliance group since the start of the BWA auction. Six days later, on 17 June IBSPL authorised its board of directors to allot 4.75 billion equity shares of ₹10 each to RIL and 250 million shares to IDPL, totaling ₹5,000 crore. RIL now owned 95% of the company with 5% held by IDPL. On 19 June, IBSPL ceased to be a private limited company and became a public limited company. All this was done before IBSPL’s memorandum of association—a document that governs the relationship of the company with external entities—was altered and the increase in its authorised share capital recorded by the Registrar of Companies in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. On 22 June 2010, IBSPL paid the staggering bid amount. On 22 January 2013, it was renamed Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. Mahendra Nahata was made a director in RJio (Guha Thakurta 2015).

The draft CAG report had some sharp observations to make. It noted that IBSPL had not declared its relationship with RIL as an associate or partner in its application for participating in the auction for 4G spectrum when details of all applications were disclosed on the website of the DoT on 6 April 2010. This non-disclosure, the CAG argued, deprived IBSPL’s competitors of their right to know about the financial status of all bidders in the auction and violated the transparency and sanctity of the auction. The CAG report held that IBSPL violated the confidentiality clause of the auction rules by leaking the information of their continued participation in the auction on the 15th day of the auction to the media. Further, the draft report indicted the DoT as “[having] failed to recognise the tell-tale sign[s] of rigging of the auction right from [the] beginning of the auction” in which a small ISP emerged as the winner by bidding 5,000 times of its net worth. It recommended that “[t]he government should get the matter investigated even at this juncture, fix responsibilities on the bidders which violated the auction conditions/rules prescribed and cancel the allotment of the BWA spectrum along with exemplary punishment on the colluding firms.” None of these observations of the CAG found their way to its final report (Guha Thakurta 2015).

From 4G Broadband to Voice Services

In 2011, after the auction, IBSPL, now owned by RIL, applied to DoT for a “mobile country code” and a “mobile network code” that would enable it to set up a “public land mobile network.” This would permit it to provide landline and mobile voice services (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

The DoT had considered the issue first in July 2008. It had then held that in case prospective BWA spectrum holders applied to the government to acquire licences permitting them to provide voice services in addition to data services, their request may be considered if they paid the same price that the successful bidder in the 3G auction paid. They clarified again in 2010 that voice services were only permitted using 2G and 3G spectrum (Guha Thakurta 2016b). The TRAI had recommended that while 3G spectrum was meant for both voice calls as well as data services, 4G spectrum, or BWA spectrum, was meant for faster diffusion of broadband and data services only. These were the conditions that were known to the bidders at the time of the auction, and their bids were prepared accordingly (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

So when IBSPL/Reliance said that it wanted the BWA spectrum to provide data services on a technological platform called long-term evolution or LTE, a 4G technology that was developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global industry trade group, this was objected to by the technical wing of the DoT, the Telecommunication Engineering Centre in March 2012, on the grounds that “the capabilities of LTE technology are much wider in scope than what is permitted in the ISP license and since LTE is a technology which can be used for providing full-fledged mobile services along with high speed data services, it is possible for an ISP licensee to use LTE for both internet services as well as full-fledged mobile services.” It reminded the DoT that “currently full mobile services are provided under UAS license only” and recommended that the issue needed further examination (qtd in Guha Thakurta 2015).

Thereafter, various committees were set up to examine the issue. In April 2012, at the request of the DoT, the TRAI furnished guidelines on changing the licensing framework and replacing it with a new unified licence (UL) regime, which would facilitate the migration of internet service providers into full service operators offering voice services. The TRAI guidelines were deliberated upon by a DoT committee and subsequently by the Telecom Commission (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

In August 2012, another DoT committee held that spectrum sold in 2010 was not a “liberalised” spectrum—wherein the terms of the licence do not require that the frequencies be used for a specific service or technology—and argued that had the spectrum blocks been specified and declared as liberalised spectrum blocks in the NIA, the bidders would have taken “informed” decisions while placing bids during the auction and the “market discovered price” might well have been different. In earlier telecom regimes, the DoT would specify the purpose for which spectrum could be used, for instance, voice or data or both, etc (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

Essentially, the committee was arguing that had it been known that those using 4G/BWA spectrum would be allowed to provide voice services, the bidders would have bid for spectrum based on a different set of commercial criteria. In essence, all bidders would have known in advance that the 4G/BWA spectrum could be used for both data and voice, and not data alone, and the playing field would have been level (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

In September 2012, the Telecom Commission decided that, given the complexities of the UL regime, further analysis and deliberations were required. It was felt that there were serious implications in implementing the TRAI’s recommendations on the UL regime for new entrants as well as for existing licensees providing various services. Yet another committee of the DoT was constituted in September 2012 to examine the issue and suggest the way forward. Till January 2013, this committee failed to decide on this issue. On 25 January 2013, this committee was expanded by including all the full-time members of the Telecom Commission, including the secretary of the DOT, and other technocrats (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

In February 2013, this committee approved the conversion of ISP licences to the new UL. Reliance Jio (as IBSPL had been renamed by then) was the first to take advantage of this decision. The company paid an “entry fee” of ₹15 crore and a “migration fee” of ₹1,658 crore in August 2013 and was granted a UL on 21 October 2013, formally authorising it to provide voice services (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

According to the CAG, the fee of ₹1,658 crore was decided upon in 2001 and this price did not reflect the “present value” of the spectrum in August 2013. Taking into account the rate of inflation between 2001 and 2013, the value of the licence would have been, the report estimated, at least ₹5,025 crore. This meant that RJio got an “undue advantage” of ₹3,367.29 crore since the price at which Reliance migrated did not factor in changes in the value of the spectrum over a period of 12 years (Guha Thakurta 2015).

During the 2010 auctions, the UAS/CMTS licensees had paid ₹1,658 crore as an entry fee, while the ISP licensees had paid only ₹30 lakh. Between 2001, when the price had been decided upon, and 2013, when Reliance paid the entry fee, the market conditions had changed drastically. But the price was not modified to reflect the present value. DoT’s permission had allowed ISP licensees holding 20 MHz BWA spectrum to offer pan-India voice services by paying the incremental entry fee of ₹1,658 crore, a fraction of the market price of the same quantity of 3G/2G spectrum.

According to the draft CAG report, the difference between the proportionate prices would have amounted to ₹20,653 crore on the basis of the 2010 auction price. Add to that the net present value of the entry fee for UAS licensees at the end of financial year 2009–10, that is (₹3,847 crore minus ₹1,658 crore), and the figure would increase to ₹22,842 crore. Thus, the alleged “undue benefits” were calculated to be ₹22,842 crore. The final report of the CAG presented in Parliament on 8 May 2015 omitted any reference to the above calculation but it reiterated that loopholes were never plugged by the DoT. When the deputy CAG Suman Saxena was asked about the changes at a press conference following the tabling of the report, she refused to provide a clear answer, merely stating “a draft is a draft” (Guha Thakurta 2016b).

Interestingly the issue of a unified licence was first considered by the TRAI in October 2003. UAS licences had been issued in November 2003 on migration of/from existing CMTS licences. UAS operators were free to provide, within their area of operation, services which cover collection, carriage, transmission and delivery of voice and/or non-voice messages over the licensee’s network by deploying circuit and/or packet switched equipment. It had been recommended by the TRAI in January 2005 that all existing licensees should migrate to UL in the next six months. However, these recommendations were not accepted and acted upon.

In the last three years, Reliance Jio has been the only 4G spectrum holding ISP which has voluntarily opted for migration to the UL regime. No other BWA spectrum holding ISP migrated to the UL, as per the list of UL licensees available on the DoT website as on 18 March 2016. Other telecom operators opted for the UL only when it was made compulsory.

Roll-out Obligations

Every MSP has to pay a fee known as SUC annually, over and above spectrum auction fee, to the government for the spectrum they utilise to provide their services. These are calculated as a percentage of the company’s adjusted gross revenue (AGR). The AGR is the total revenue received after any allowed deductions or allowances. In its final report, the CAG had alluded to the liberal roll-out obligations of five years that had been a part of the NIA. Under its terms, the winner of the BWA spectrum had to ensure that at least half the rural short distance charging areas (these are units that the large telecom circles are further divided into) had to be covered within five years of the effective date of grant of the spectrum. Coverage of an area would mean at least 90% of the area would get the required street level coverage. To incentivise the roll-out in rural areas, the SUC for use of BWA spectrum were kept low. However, the TRAI also felt in 2008 that if annual fees for BWA spectrum were lower than the slabs defined for the cellular telephony spectrum, it would open the possibility of arbitrage. This was a concern because using BWA technologies, cellular operators could offer VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services on a mobile platform and pay less in spectrum use fees. It would then be difficult to segregate the subscribers making the collection of fees on cellular telephony even more complicated than it already is.

Keeping these concerns in mind, TRAI had also felt that the BWA operators should pay the same AGR share as the cellular operators. In order to lessen the burden on rural subscribers TRAI however recommended that the DoT should not charge an annual spectrum fee for the first year of operation of the BWA network. After this one year, it recommended charging an annual fee of 1% of AGR, which was to be added to the applicable slot of spectrum fees that the operator was already paying. The DoT accepted the recommendations of the TRAI and laid them down in the NIA.

The CAG noted in its final report that despite the liberal roll-out obligations of five years, the 4G spectrum remained largely unutilised with hardly any significant roll-out of services since the allotment of spectrum in 2010. “The liberal roll-out obligations have not been achieved by any of the six winners even after four years since the award of the spectrum,” it pointed out. “BWA services have been started only in a few select cities by only one operator. BWA services have not been rolled out in rural areas which was one of the prime objectives of the auction.”

With RJio being granted permission to provide voice services over the BWA network, it was effectively put in a position of advantage over other providers of voice services who pay SUC at 5–8% depending on the quantum of spectrum held. The final CAG report pointed out this discrepancy and noted that this combined with the failure in roll-out led to a “lack of efficient use of spectrum, hoarding of spectrum in view of absence of roll out of BWA services and non-realisation of the expected revenue share in the form of SUC even after more than four years of allocation.” The TRAI had, in subsequent recommendations in September 2013, suggested making the SUC rates uniform for all UL holders irrespective of which spectrum band they used. It suggested the rate be fixed at 3% for BWA spectrum where services are being provided under the CMTS/UASL/UL regimes. However, this suggestion was not accepted.

Supreme Court Verdict

The observations about the rigging of the auction and the irregularities in the bidding process failed to attract the attention of the Supreme Court, just as they had disappeared from the final CAG report. Nor was the auction challenged by any of the competing companies at the level of the TRAI or the DoT. In its judgment, the Court stated:

We may like to add here itself that the auction of BWA in which IBSPL turned out to be a successful bidder resulting into the acquisition of pan India BWA spectrum in its favour is not the subject matter of dispute and was never questioned by anybody….

Further, as already noted in the earlier part of this judgment, though 11 bidders had participated, none of the other bidders make [sic] any complaint about the fairness, transparency and as well about the process of bidding (Centre for Public Interest Litigation v Union of India 2016).

In light of the observations made in the CAG’s draft report, this position appears to be open to challenge. In the final CAG report, it was pointed out that the violation of the confidentiality clause of the auction rules would have necessitated cancellation of the allocation of spectrum. As per paragraph 4.1.1 of the NIA on “confidentiality,” bidders and insiders were prohibited from conveying any confidential information to any other person, including any other bidder or its insiders. They were also not permitted to disclose the status of their participation, including whether they continue to bid on any or all service areas, in any of the auctions, until the auction was completed.

The Economic Times report on the 15th day of the auction (10 June 2010) clearly violated this condition. Its report had an immediate impact, with Bharti Airtel which had been competing for the Delhi and Mumbai circles since start of the auction withdrawing from the bidding for these circles on 10 June within hours of the publication of the story. The non-disclosure of its partnership with RIL should have also disqualified IBSPL’s bid. As per paragraph 4.2.1 of the NIA, applicants were required to inform the DoT promptly in case of any change in information submitted by them as part of their application. The DoT was only informed of the sale of the 95% of IBSPL shares to RIL on 22 June 2010, well after the auction ended.

Having swiftly disposed of the possibility of serious discrepancies in the auction process itself, the first issue that the Supreme Court turned its attention to was the change in licence which permitted voice telephony to be provided in addition to data services over the 4G spectrum. In his PIL, Bhushan had asked the Court to quash the 2013 order of the DoT, arguing that it constituted a “back-door entry” for RJio into obtaining a unified licence. He argued that an undue financial benefit had been passed on to RJio by this mechanism. He had brought to the Court’s attention the calculations in the draft CAG report. He had also alleged irregularities in the formation of the final DoT committee that issued the order, saying that the secretary of the DOT, under whose chairmanship the committee operated was due to retire in two months. He alleged further that the representative of the finance ministry who attended the meeting of the Telecom Commission that approved the recommendations of the DoT committee ignored the finance ministry’s own recommendation of 2007 where it had objected to the telecom minister’s attempt to grant 2G licences for ₹1,658 crore (Guha Thakurta 2016a).

On this issue, the Supreme Court relied on the arguments of the Solicitor General of India Ranjit Kumar (Centre for Public Interest Litgation v Union of India 2016). He argued that BWA/4G spectrum cannot be compared with the 3G spectrum as the latter was operated in the frequency division duplex (FDD) mode while the former operated in the time division duplex (TDD) mode. FDD and TDD are two different standards of LTE technology which use frequency bands in different ways. Under FDD, separate blocks of spectrum are used for the uplink (connection from the end-user’s device to the provider’s server or tower) and the downlink (connection from the tower to the end-user’s device). So when the 3G auction was for 5+5 MHz blocks, this indicated that each successful bidder was granted a 5 MHz uplink block and a 5 MHz downlink block in the 2.1 GHz frequency band.

This separation of blocks is ideal for voice calls where equivalent amounts of data are sent in both directions. TDD, however, uses the same frequency block for both uplink and downlink connections. This makes it more suitable for data uses where the downlink connection carries much more traffic than the uplink on average. The solicitor general stated that FDD needed fewer base stations, incurred lower costs, had higher frequency usage efficiency than TDD and, therefore, their prices were different. Since RJio was granted permission to offer voice calls over the 4G network in the TDD mode, it could not be charged at the rates for 3G in the FDD mode. The solicitor general, however, overlooked DoT’s own decision of 2008 when it had decided to charge any BWA/4G winner the price of 3G spectrum, if it asked for permission to provide voice services after the auction.

In its recommendations made in October 2003 for the UAS regime, the TRAI had clarified that UAS licensees were free to use any technology without any restriction. Though there is no denying the fact that the TRAI had recommended in September 2006 and in July 2008 the differentiated prices for 3G and BWA spectrum, it had also stated in its recommendations that “the primary aim of the Authority in recommending a reserve price for BWA spectrum in India is that the spectrum should be affordable to allow all interested and qualified operators to acquire it, while at the same time, dissuade non-serious players and also to encourage efficient use and roll out.”

The solicitor general did not mention the fact that the DoT had, in its guidelines for the BWA auction issued in November 2007, proposed to auction BWA/4G spectrum in 2.5 GHz band in the FDD mode. The TRAI in its recommendations in July 2008 had suggested the auction of available spectrum in 3.3–3.4 GHz band for BWA services in blocks of 7+7 MHz (7 MHz for uplink and 7 MHz for downlink) and had left the mode of operation—FDD or TDD—to the service providers. The TRAI had stated that it did not want to specify any one mode in line with its policy of technology neutrality. The TRAI had, though, recommended auction of BWA spectrum in the 2.3–2.4 GHz band in TDD mode. However, the TRAI did not differentiate on the pricing of the BWA spectrum based on FDD or TDD modes and recommended a uniform price for spectrum in all the three bands, that is, the 2.3–2.4 GHz, 2.5–2.69 GHz and 3.3–3.4 GHz bands. In line with this thought process, neither the information memorandum for BWA spectrum nor the NIA made any reference to the mode of operation, again ostensibly to follow the established policy of technology neutrality.

The solicitor general further claimed that 4G LTE technology only appeared in 2012, a claim that the Supreme Court accepted without question. There are, however, credible documents, including TRAI reports which prove that bidders were fully aware of upcoming 4G LTE technology as early as 2008. Records show that there were more than 100 operators in 46 countries which had already committed themselves to LTE trials and deployments by the end of 2010. A few countries had already installed 4G LTE networks by late 2009.

Global Monthly Data Traffic

The court accepted the solicitor general’s submissions about the mode of operation being the reason for the costs of 3G and BWA being incomparable. It combined these with the arguments put forward by senior advocate Harish Salve who appeared in the Supreme Court for RJio. Salve argued that trends in the growth of total global monthly data and voice traffic indicated that data traffic was growing much faster than voice traffic. He also argued that the share of data traffic was nearly seven times more than that of voice traffic in the overall services provided by operators worldwide. The Court used this contention to argue that the “main source of revenue for the service providers is from data services and not voice-telephony.” The bench held that

... [i]n fact, Mr. Salve even claimed that voice-telephony for mobile companies, insofar as income generation is concerned, does not remain that attractive and in near future, there is a possibility of a situation when voice-telephony services may be provided free of charge to those using mobile data services by paying for those services. Whether this happens or not is anybody’s guess. However, what cannot be disputed is that main source of income for mobile companies is data services and not voice telephone services. This needs to be borne in mind while testing the argument of the petitioner (emphasis added) (Centre for Public Interest Litigation v Union of India 2016).

The court thus held that these contentions formed a legitimate basis for the decision to grant a unified licence to RJio and that the change in the CAG’s calculations from the draft to the final report were due to the CAG making the mistake of treating 3G spectrum and BWA spectrum as equivalent. The Supreme Court bench traced legal precedents to establish the principle that a policy decision when not found to be arbitrary, based on irrelevant considerations, or mala fide or against any statutory provisions it was not within the remit of the courts to interfere by means of a judicial review. Using these arguments, the Court ruled that the grant of the unified licence was valid and did not constitute a “back-door” entry.

On the issue of “undue benefit” being passed to RJio, the Supreme Court noted that in 2010 the spectrum was delinked from the licence unlike in 2001 when the value of the 3G spectrum was determined, and thus charging the inflation adjusted cost of the 3G spectrum as an entry fee to acquire the licence would have been incorrect. Even the calculation contained in the final CAG report was rejected on the basis of the Solicitor General’s and RJio’s submissions and the amount of ₹1,658 crore that had been charged to achieve parity between ISP licensees and UAS/CMTS licensees, was considered correct. The Supreme Court thus found no merit in the claim that undue financial benefits had been accrued by RJio. The Supreme Court also noted that the promoters of IBSPL did not derive any unfair gains and also that they did not divest or sell their equity to RIL.

Salve’s Flawed Assumptions

These arguments on which the Supreme Court relied appear to be based on flawed assumptions. First, the global monthly traffic data referred to by Salve is not relevant for India at this juncture. In India, though data traffic growth is indeed rapid, it is still generating much lower revenue than voice calls. The rural “teledensity,” as per the latest TRAI data, is 50.88% only (TRAI 2016). This means that roughly one out of two rural Indians use mobile phones while in many urban areas in India, there are more mobile phones than human beings. More importantly, mobile service providers in the country continue to derive more than three-fourths of their revenue from voice calls, as the figures in audited financial statements of major Indian telecom companies for financial year 2014–15 clearly indicate.

In 2016, Bharti Airtel, the largest such provider in India, disclosed that data revenues were only 23.3% of total revenues from mobile services. For Idea, the same figure stood at 20.1%. For Vodafone, it stood at 18%. For the public sector Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, it was a mere 10%. Thus, the rapid growth of mobile data services in India notwithstanding, as rural mobile phone ownership rises, voice services will continue to remain the major source of revenue for mobile service providers in the foreseeable future. Hence, the Supreme Court should have been far more circumspect before accepting the claim of Salve that voice services were of little value to mobile service providers like RJio.

Voice Services: Critical for RJio

Further, TRAI data shows that more than 95% of data traffic in India is managed by mobile service providers that also provide voice services. Had RJio not been able to obtain the permission of voice services, it would have found it extremely difficult to enter and be successful in the data market. Hence, the permission to provide voice services was precious and of utmost importance to RJio. While the technical factors distinguishing 3G and 4G technology are indeed valid, the issue of whether a 4G voice call licence can be valued at the price of a 3G licence, or how their respective prices are to be determined is still open to question. Finally the question that remains unanswered is why the scope of 4G was initially limited. It could be argued that this was done only to favour RJio.

As for the issue of bundling of spectrum with CMTS/UAS licences, in 2001 the 2G CMTS licence was bundled with 4.4 + 4.4 MHz spectrum blocks in the 1.8 GHz band whereas in 2012, the licence was delinked from the spectrum. It should however also be borne in mind that while CMTS/UAS licensees were getting 4.4 + 4.4 MHz start-up spectrum to provide voice services only, RJio got permission to provide voice services on a contiguous pan-India 20 MHz BWA spectrum. No other operator in India had this quantity of spectrum for providing voice services throughout the country. As the reserve price of per MHz paired pan-India spectrum in the 1.8 GHz band recommended by TRAI in April 2012 was ₹3,622 crore, for an additional 11.2 MHz paired spectrum provided to RJio, the corresponding price in 2012–13 would have been ₹40,566 crore. Hence undue benefit accorded to RJio would then amount to ₹26,060 crore.

Though Salve claimed that IBSPL promoters did not gain anything out of divestment of the company to RJio, it is widely known that Infotel’s promoters have been given board-level positions in the Reliance group and significant work orders have been given to Infotel group firms. These companies, which were in the red earlier, have now started earning significant profits.

As for the changes between the draft report and the final report of the CAG report, Salve claimed in the Supreme Court that the discrepancy in the numbers was due to someone “planting” misinformation in the CAG’s office. According to a reliable source within the CAG who spoke to this writer on condition of anonymity, it was other way around. He stated that key officials were under both external and internal pressure from the company. Two senior government bureaucrats who were the members of the IMC allegedly tried to influence officials in the CAG’s office to “tone down” the report. The source said that the head of RJio in Bihar met top officials in the CAG’s office and attempted to convince them to meet Mahendra Nahata, now a director in RJio. In March 2014, CAG officials allegedly received instructions from the “top” to “save” senior government officials and meet those who had sought appointments with them (Guha Thakurta 2015). Unfortunately, the PIL did not name or summon as witnesses or respondents either the CAG himself or the Director General of Audit (Post and Telecommunication) who conducted the audit and had prepared the draft report. Their views were not recorded before the Supreme Court dismissed the petition.

The CAG report on 4G/BWA auction was selected by the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament in May 2015 for examination during the year 2015–16, but this did not take place. The report has again been selected for examination by the committee of MPs (Members of Parliament) in May.

‘Let Government Decide’

The final issue before the Supreme Court related to the loss on account of lower spectrum usage charges. It had to determine whether the SUC rate being charged from RJio was correct. The Court chose not to intervene. It noted that RJio had submitted proof of compliance of roll-out obligations in 2015 within the deadline prescribed in the contract by registering with the Telecom Enforcement and Resource Monitoring Cell of the DoT before the due date in all 22 service areas. It stated that the date of this registration is taken as the date of completion of roll-out obligations on successful testing. In this case, testing is in progress and the Court concluded it was likely to be completed in a few months, although now the five-year period has passed. Technically, however, if the completion of testing is also necessary to meet the roll-out obligations, RJio has failed to meet this requirement.

Though the deadline of five years for roll-out ended on 31 August 2015, RJio has not yet rolled out the services to the general public anywhere in the country. Initially, it was to be launched in December 2015, then it was postponed to March–April 2016 and it has now been further extended to December 2016. As per the NIA, if the licensee failed to achieve its roll-out obligations, its spectrum assignment was to be withdrawn. The Supreme Court has, however, not prescribed the levy of any penalty or the withdrawal of spectrum, though neither RJio, nor for that matter any other 4G spectrum winner (such as Aircel, Qualcomm, Tikona or Augere) has rolled out 4G services for general customers as yet. The exception is Bharti Airtel which has rolled out 4G services in some limited areas.

It is to be noted here that though the 3G licensees were permitted a grace period of one year beyond the five-year period for achieving their roll-out obligations, they could use this grace period by paying liquidation damages at the rate prescribed in the NIA. On the other hand, BWA/4G licensees were not given any such grace period in the NIA. If the BWA operator does not complete its roll-out obligations within the five-year period, the spectrum assignment is required to be withdrawn. This has not been done in the case of any of the BWA spectrum holders.

As regards lower SUC charges payable by RJio, it must be stated that the BWA technologies have developed to 4G LTE (or long-term evolution) technologies over time, which also includes voice services. Post auction, RJio has been permitted to provide voice services as well, placing them at an advantageous position in comparison to other voice service providers which pay SUC at 5–8% depending upon the quantum of the spectrum held. Hence, the SUC rates should have been made uniform for all UL holders irrespective of spectrum band they use. Even TRAI had, in September 2013, recommended that SUC rate for BWA spectrum should also be uniformly fixed at 3% for CMTS/UAS/UL licensees. The CAG report raised this issue and stated that continuation of SUC at 1% for BWA/4G licensees would not only disturb the level playing field and provide significant undue advantage to RJio, but also cause a huge loss of revenue to the government over the 20-year licence period.

On the subject of the SUC, the Supreme Court noted that the matter was under “consideration” by the DoT and chose to leave it to the department’s discretion, stating that the decision was one for the government to take. Even if one agrees with this line of reasoning, the issue of SUC demands further scrutiny. It was reported on 23 May 2016 that the DoT had submitted its recommendations to the attorney general’s office seeking legal opinion. These recommendations suggested a uniform SUC for all spectrum bands ranging between 3% and 4.5% to ensure a level playing field. The suggestions would apply retrospectively, meaning that if accepted and notified, RJio and other BWA service providers would have to pay back-charges. A widely-reported note prepared by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) in April 2016 has highlighted how every major telecom operator with the sole exception of RJio is in favour of a uniform SUC, preferably at 3% (Srivas 2016).

A Deloitte report quoted in the COAI note has described how even a reduction of 1% for the companies that pay SUC of up to 8% at present could result in industry-wide investments to the tune of about ₹58,000 crore and an increase in 3G connections to the extent of 230 million. An industry source told this writer on condition of anonymity that one could “read between the lines” and find out the “real game” being played on the setting of SUC rates for 3G and BWA spectrum. Whatever be the final decision of the DoT in this regard, it is certain that it will have significant financial implications, not just for companies like RJio but for the exchequer as well.

On 2 June, the Times of India reported that Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi has rejected the suggestion of a uniform SUC on the ground that it would violate the terms of BWA/4G auction (Doval and Mahapatra 2016). The government’s chief legal officer reportedly stated that the 2010 agreement for sale in the 2,300 MHz band “shows that the government has not kept any scope for revision of the rate” whereas in the subsequent auctions there was scope for revision and the government had indeed changed the rates. Rohatgi added that his predecessor G E Vahanvati had made a similar recommendation in 2014. If the attorney general’s recommendation is accepted, RJio would continue to pay 1% SUC against 5-8% paid by its competitors like Bharti Airtel, Idea Celullar, Aircel and Vodafone (which are all represented in the COAI) and the issue of a level playing-field again comes up. The COAI had earlier described the fact that RJio paid a lower SUC as “discriminatory.”

An editorial in the Economic Times on 3 June reacting to Rohatgi’s opinion argued that the variation in SUC amounted to “[i]nstitutionalised, unequal competition...earn[ing] for the country a damaging reputation for crony capitalism” and was “against natural justice and fair competition.” It suggested a solution to the problem: if the law prevented the government from increasing RJio’s SUC, then to level the playing field the government should bring down the SUC for all the other operators to the same 1%. It also recalled that the SUC is a legacy of the age when spectrum was bundled with licences and allotted by the government without any separate payment, and made little sense in the system of spectrum allocation by competitive bidding (Economic Times 2016).

On Prashant Bhushan

On 12 January 2016, Prashant Bhushan was grilled by the Supreme Court bench in open court.

Why should we hear PILs filed by CPIL [Centre for Public Interest Litigation, an NGO that Bhushan runs which had filed the PIL]? You are a professional litigant. Can you become a ‘centre’ for PIL? Can anyone walk into your office and tell you ‘I want to file a PIL?’ (Mahapatra 2016 qtd in Guha Thakurta 2016a).

Bhushan replied that it was an organisation formed by senior lawyers and had a committee comprising senior advocates who scrutinise every petition before it is filed in court. “There is a committee which comprises Fali Nariman, Anil Divan, Kamini Jaiswal, my father and myself and all petitions are scrutinised by us,” he replied.

The bench asked whether it could be confident that “a litigation is not at the instance of a party trying to settle scores with some other party” and whether the CPIL had a process by which it evaluated petitions to ensure that it was not acting on behalf of private parties trying to settle scores with others through the instrument of a PIL. It suggested that CPIL’s credibility permitted commercial interests to use it as a proxy in battles against competitors. Justice Thakur said,

When you come to us, we take you seriously. But when a commercial competitor comes to us, we might not. This competitor knows this and might send a proxy to you with documents and information which you otherwise don’t have access to. You have to establish a credible mechanism to justify that a particular case is fit to be agitated.

Outstanding Issues

Several significant issues have emerged following the 8 April judgment of the Supreme Court. First, the questionable behaviour of IBSPL during and after placing bids needs to be thoroughly investigated to ascertain whether the norms of the BWA/4G auction were violated in 2010, that is, to find out whether the auction was “rigged” as has been alleged in the draft CAG report. Even if the Supreme Court states that it is satisfied that the auction results were not challenged, this should not preclude the possibility of further investigation.

The second issue is the grant of the unified licence and the price RJio paid for it. The Court has ruled that neither the inflation-adjusted price of 3G spectrum from 2001, nor the winning bids for 3G spectrum in 2010 are appropriate prices for licensing voice telephony over the BWA network. The Court has accepted that the amount of ₹1,658 crore that was paid to achieve parity between UAS/CMTS and ISP licensees at the time of the auction is the correct amount. Nevertheless, the question that remains unanswered is how the price of a unified licence for a user of BWA spectrum is to be determined particularly when a 4G licensee gets the permission to provide voice services on 20 MHz spectrum in all 22 circles, which no other telecom service providers had.

The rate of the SUC is another significant issue that is yet to be decided. Moreover, the question as to whether RJio and other circle-specific BWA spectrum winners Aircel, Tikona, Qualcomm, Augere and Bharti Airtel should be penalised for failing to meet their roll-out obligations as per the NIA to maintain the sanctity of the auction process needs to be answered.

As for the judgment on the PIL itself, Bhushan could seek a hearing on a review petition before a larger bench of the Supreme Court. It should be possible for new individuals and organisations to be impleaded in the review petition. In that case, the Court could summon as witnesses some of the following individuals who are familiar with what has taken place: Suman Saxena, Deputy CAG, R B Sinha, former director general of audit, posts and telecommunications, S K Ghosh, senior vice president RJio, Mahendra Nahata, chairman, HFCL, Anant Nahata director, IBSPL, Arun Rane and Ajay Udgirkar of Axis Bank and Vijayalakshmy L Gupta, the then chairperson of the IMC that monitored the 2010 auction. Gupta was a former member (finance) of the Telecom Commision. She was a 1974 batch officer of the Indian Defence Accounts Service who later became financial adviser (defence finance) in the defence ministry when the present CAG of India Shashi Kant Sharma was defence secretary between 2011 and 2013. After her retirement from goverment service, she became a member of the TRAI. The other important person who knows exactly what happened during the 4G spectrum auctions in 2010 is of course the current secretary DoT, J S Deepak.

In the interest of fairness, this writer sent detailed questionnaires to the following individuals and representatives of companies to find out their responses to the issues raised: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology (who, incidentally, served as a legal consultant for and was paid a retainer by Reliance Industries Limited, RJio’s parent company, between April 2013 and March 2014) (Livemint 2014), J S Deepak, secretary, DoT, and spokespersons of Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone India, Aircel India, Tata Teleservices and Qualcomm India. Responses were solicited to questions relating to the conduct of the auction, the role of a small firm called IBSPL, the issuance of an allegedly forged bank guarantee document by Axis Bank and the points made in the Supreme Court judgment. All these nine questionnaires were emailed on 17 May. Till the time of publication, only one response was received, namely, from the spokesperson of the Bharti Airtel group declining comment.

Edited, printed , published owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ # LIG-2 No 761,

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