New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Central Vigilance Commission on a petition for a probe into the former Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan's alleged action favouring Reliance Infocomm (RIC) to launch its Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) service.

A three-budge Bench comprising the Chief justice Y.K. Sabharwal, Justice C.K. Thakker and Justice R.V. Raveendran issued notice on the public interest petition filed by the Citizens' Forum Against Corruption, which alleged that RIC had allotted one crore shares to another company owned by a close associate of the then Minister in the National Democratic Alliance Government and his son-in-law.

Counsel Prashant Bhushan said Mr. Mahajan inaugurated the WLL service of the company with the capability of full mobility cellular service even though it had not secured the licence. RIC allotted one crore shares to three front companies at Re.1 each against Rs. 55 paid by Reliance Industries itself for the same shares during the same time.

Counsel said the circumstances surrounding the allotment of the shares raised a suspicion that the real beneficiary was the then Minister.

Policy changed

The petition said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had kept limited mobility and cellular mobility separate and distinct entities. Itspecifically disallowed limited mobility service providers using mobile switching centres and specified the use of a technology known as V5.2 so that limited mobility could not be converted into full mobility. But this policy was changed soon after Mr. Mahajan took over as Communications Minister mainly to favour RIC.

Only because of his patronage could Reliance get five million subscribers based on a fully mobile offering, hundreds of times more than what it could have got as a limited mobile operator.

Reliance valuations shot up to thousands of crores of rupees, something its competitors could not dream of while offering limited mobility in the same circles. Because of Mr. Mahajan's patronage to Reliance, a Rs. 1,100-crore loss was caused to the exchequer vis-à-vis the fourth cellular mobile licence entry fee of Rs. 1,633 crore, the petition said.

The forum said it wrote to the Prime Minister, the CBI and the CVC in May 2005 but no action was taken.

`Files with government'

However, Mr. Mahajan "unequivocally and emphatically" said that as Communications Minister in the Vajpayee Government he had "not taken any decision which favoured any particular company".

The files were there for the government to see, he said in a statement.

Mr. Mahajan said he had not received any notice from the court nor was any copy of the petition marked to him. "So it is difficult for me to comment on the details."

However, all files were with the government and "are open with the department [concerned]."

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