The
Centre for Public Interest Litigation filed the first petition against the Union of India for irregularities in awarding 2G spectrum licenses. The petition alleged that the government lost $15.53 billion by issuing spectrum in 2008 based on 2001 prices, and by not following a competitive bidding process. This led to further petitions, and an investigation began in 2010.
2007 •
May: A Raja becomes Telecom Minister. •
August: Allotment of 2G spectrum and Universal Access Service (UAS) licences by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) begins. •
25 September: The Telecom Ministry issues a press release that its deadline for application is 1 October. •
1 October: DoT receives 575 applications for UAS licences from 46 companies. •
2 November: The prime minister writes to Raja, directing him to ensure the allotment of 2G spectrum in a fair and transparent manner and to ensure that the licence fee was revised. Raja rejects many of the prime minister's recommendations. •
22 November: In a letter to the DoT, the Finance Ministry raises procedural concerns. Its demand for a review is rejected.
2008 •
10 January: The DoT decides to issue licences on first-come, first-served basis, advancing the cut-off date from 1 October to 25 September and announcing on its website that those applying between 3.30 and 4.30 pm would be granted licences in accordance with policy. • Total collection from sale of 122 licenses was about 92 billion. • Swan Telecom, Unitech and Tata Teleservices sell shares at much higher prices to Etisalat, Telenor and DoCoMo, respectively.
2009 •
4 May: A telecom-watchdog NGO files a complaint with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on illegalities in spectrum allocation to Loop Telecom. •
19 May: Another complaint is filed with the CVC by Arun Agarwal, highlighting the low-cost spectrum grant to Swan Telecom. The CVC directs the CBI to investigate irregularities in the allocation of 2G spectrum. •
1 July: Responding to a petition from S-Tel, the Delhi High Court rules the advancement of the cut-off date illegal. •
20 October: The CBI registers a case, filing a
First Information Report against unknown officers of the DoT and unknown private persons and companies under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act. •
22 October: The
Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation raids DoT offices. •
16 November: The CBI investigates a wiretapped conversation by corporate lobbyist Nira Radia to learn the involvement of middlemen in the grant of spectrum to telecom companies, seeking information from the Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation about Radia and her company.
2010 •
13 March: The Supreme Court upholds the Delhi High Court ruling that the cutoff-date advancement was illegal. •
31 March: According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, there were large-scale irregularities in spectrum allocation. •
2 April: CBI Deputy Inspector General of Investigations Vineet Agarwal and
Indian Revenue Service Director General of Income Tax Investigations Milap Jain, who were investigating the case, are transferred; Jain becomes Director General of International Taxation. •
6 May: Telephone conversation between Raja and Niira Radia, recorded by the
Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation, made public. The
Centre for Public Interest Litigation petitions the Delhi High Court for a special investigation of the case. •
25 May: Petition dismissed by the court. •
August: Dismissal appealed to the Supreme Court. •
18 August: High Court refuses to order the prime minister to rule on a request by Janata Party chief
Subramanian Swamy to prosecute Raja. •
13 September: The Supreme Court asks the government and Raja to reply within 10 days to three petitions filed by the CPIL and others alleging a scam in granting telecom licences in 2008. •
24 September: Swamy petitions the Supreme Court to order the PM to prosecute Raja. •
27 September: The Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation informs the Supreme Court of a probe of firms suspected to have violated the
Foreign Exchange Management Act, saying it cannot confirm or deny Raja's involvement. •
8 October: The Supreme Court asks the government to respond to the Comptroller and Auditor General report about the case. •
21 October: Draft reports from the CAG are presented to the Supreme Court. •
29 October: The Supreme Court criticises the CBI for its slowness in investigating the case. •
10 November: The CAG submits a report on 2G spectrum to the government, stating a loss of to the exchequer. •
11 November: The DoT files a Supreme Court affidavit that the CAG lacked the authority to question the 2008 policy decision. •
14 November: Raja resigns as telecom minister. •
15 November: Kapil Sibal placed in charge of Telecom Ministry. •
20 November: Affidavit on behalf of the PM filed in Supreme Court rejecting the charge of inaction on Swamy's complaint. •
22 November: The CBI and the Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation tell the SC they will file a charge sheet within three months, and the CBI says it will investigate the role of Niira Radia. •
24 November: The SC reserves verdict on Swamy's request to the PM to prosecute Raja. •
25 November: The SC criticises the CBI for not questioning Raja. •
29 November: The CBI files a status report on the probe. •
30 November: The SC questions the
Central Vigilance Commission's P. J. Thomas' fitness to supervise the CBI probe, since he was Telecom Secretary at that time. •
1 December: The SC orders the original tapes of conversations by Radia. Raja questions the CAG findings. •
2 December: The government supplies Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation tapes to the SC, which criticises Raja for ignoring the PM's advice to delay the spectrum allocation. •
8 December: SC favours including 2001 (when first-come, first-served was the norm for spectrum allocation) in the probe period and asks the government to consider a special court. The Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation reports a money trail covering 10 countries, including Mauritius. •
14 December: PIL filed in SC, seeking the cancellation of new telecom licences and 2G spectrum allocated under Raja. •
15 December: Swamy petitions a Delhi court for his inclusion as a public prosecutor, saying Raja favoured "ineligible" companies Swan Telecom and Unitech Wireless in allocating spectrum. •
16 December: The SC decides to monitor the CBI inquiry.
2011 •
4 January: Swamy petitions the SC for cancellation of the licenses. •
10 January: Supreme Court notifies the government of Swamy's petition, and issues notices to 11 companies which allegedly did not fulfill the roll-out obligations or were ineligible. •
30 January: The government's decision to regularise the licenses of companies which failed to meet the deadline is challenged in the Supreme Court. •
2 February: Raja, former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura and Raja's former personal secretary, R. K. Chandolia, are arrested. •
8 February: Raja is remanded to two more days of CBI custody, and Behura and Chandolia are placed in judicial custody. Swan Telecom corporate promoter Shahid Usman Balwa is arrested. •
10 February: The Supreme Court asks the CBI to investigate corporations which were beneficiaries of the spectrum allocation. Raja and Balwa are remanded to CBI custody for four more days by a special CBI court. •
14 February: Raja's custody is extended by three days, and Balwa's for four. •
17 February: Raja is sent to Tihar Jail under judicial custody. •
18 February: The Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation questions Kani Mozhi at its Chennai headquarters. •
25 February: The Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation tells a Delhi court that Balwa facilitated transactions to Kalaignar TV. •
28 February: Raja requests video-conferenced judicial proceedings, saying that he is threatened by other inmates. •
1 March: The CBI tells the SC that 63 people are under investigation. Raja appears in CBI court via video-conference. •
11 March: The Delhi High Court establishes a special court. Balwa is also allowed to appear via video-conference. •
17 March: The SC reserves judgment on licence cancellations, rejecting corporate claims that
estoppel cannot be applied to protect illegality. •
29 March: The SC allows the CBI to file its
chargesheet on 2 April instead of 31 March. Asif Balwa and Rajeev Agarwal are arrested. •
2 April: The CBI files its first chargesheet. •
25 April: The CBI files a second chargesheet, and Kanimozhi, Sharad Kumar and Karim Morani are summoned. •
6 May: Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar appear, requesting bail, and Morani requests an appearance exemption on medical grounds. The SC issues a contempt of court notice to
Sahara India Pariwar managing director
Subrata Roy and two others for alleged interference in the
Directorate General of Economic Enforcement investigation. •
7 May: The special CBI court reserves judgment on Kanimozhi and Kumar's bail requests. •
14 May: The special CBI court postpones judgment on the bail pleas for 20 May. •
20 May: The special court refuses Kanimozhi and Kumar's bail requests, ordering their arrest to prevent witness-tampering. •
8 June: Delhi HC judge
Ajit Bharihoke again refuses bail Kanimozhi and Kumar's bail requests. •
20 June: The SC refuses Kanimozhi's bail request. •
25 July: Arguments begin, with Raja wanting to summon the prime minister and former finance minister P. Chidambaram as witnesses. •
26 August: The special CBI court allows Subramanian Swamy to argue his own case, primarily to address possible loopholes in its investigation. •
30 August: The Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation freezes accounts and
attaches properties worth belonging to five companies (primarily related to DB Realty under the
Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA)). •
1 September: The
Enforcement Directorate files a status report in Supreme Court of a
Foreign Exchange Management Act violation of 100 billion. •
15 September: Swamy requests that P. Chidambaram should be charged. •
22 September: The CBI defends Chidambaram in the SC, blaming the DoT. •
26 September: The CBI requests criminal-breach-of-trust charges for Raja, Chandolia and Behura. •
19 October: The CBI files a
First Information Report against Maran and his brother in the
Aircel-
Maxis deal. •
10 October: The SC reserves judgment on Swamy's request for a probe of Home Minister Chidambaram's role in the matter. The CBI arrests former telecom minister and
DMK leader
Dayanidhi Maran and his brother,
Kalanithi Maran. •
22 October: The special CBI court finds
prima facie evidence to try the 17 accused (including Raja) on charges including criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, cheating and forgery. •
3 November: The special CBI court dismisses bail requests of all eight applicants, including Kanimozhi. •
8 November: The special court orders CBI to provide Swamy with copies of files on equity sales by telecom companies in its investigation of P. Chidambaram's involvement. •
9 November: The Delhi HC refuses bail to Karim Morani on health grounds, promising a ruling to the CBI on five other bail requests by 1 December. •
11 November: Trial of the 17 accused begins in the Patiala House special CBI court. •
14 November: The
United Progressive Alliance government asks the SC to restrain Swamy from publicly accusing the UPA leadership, especially
Home Minister P Chidambaram and UPA chair
Sonia Gandhi. •
22 November: The special court moves the trial to the Tihar jail, after a Delhi high-court order. •
23 November: The SC grants bail to five corporate executives: Sanjay Chandra of Unitech Wireless, Vinod Goenka of Swan Telecom and the Reliance Group's Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nayar. •
28 November: The
Delhi High Court grants bail to DMK MP Kanimozhi and four others: Karim Morani, Sharad Kumar, Asif Balwa and Rajeev Agarwal, upholding the principle of parity under
Section 144 of the
Constitution of India in a SC order. •
29 November: The special court grants bail to Shahid Balwa, citing the principle of parity; the SC and HC had granted bail to 10 other accused parties. •
1 December: The special court grants bail to Raja's former private secretary, R. K. Chandolia, ordering him not to visit the DoT without prior court permission. •
2 December: Claiming
suo motu, the HC stays trial-court bail granted to R. K. Chandolia. •
7 December: The SC stays the HC's
suo motu order against Chandolia's bail request. •
8 December: The special CBI court accepts Swamy's request to summon Chidambaram as a witness and question two witnesses: senior CBI and Finance Ministry officials. •
12 December: The CBI files a third chargesheet, naming
Essar Group corporate promoters
Ravi Ruia, his son Anshuman Ruia and its director of strategy and planning, Vikas Saraf, and
Loop Telecom promoters Kiran Khaitan and her husband, I P Khaitan. It also charges
Loop Mobile India, its subsidiary Loop Telecom and
Essar Tele Holding. •
16 December: The HC rejects the bail request of Siddharth Behura: "He was the 'perpetrator' of the illegal designs of Raja and would not claim benefit of parity with 10 others released on bail".
2012 •
2 February: The Supreme Court cancels the 122 licenses issued by Raja and imposes a ₹50 million ($1,018,122) fine on Unitech, Swan and Tata Teleservices and a ₹5 million fine on Loop Telecom Pvt Ltd, S-Tel, Allianz Infratech and Sistema Shyam Tele Services. The SC requested a trial-court ruling about whether Home Minister
P Chidambaram should be charged. •
4 February: The special court, under justice O.P Saini, dismisses Swamy's request to charge Chidambaram. •
8 February: The Enforcement Directorate and the Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation charge DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran with
money laundering and his brother,
Kalanithi Maran, for allegedly receiving about 5.5 billion illegally in the Aircel-Maxis deal. •
9 February: Essar Group and Loop Telecom appeal their special-court subpoenas to the Supreme Court. •
15 February: The Supreme Court refuses an interim stay on the 22 February summonses of Essar Group, Loop Telecom and their officials by the special court. •
22 February: The CBI files a complaint with the CVC about witness-tampering by the Directorate General of Income Tax Investigation, allegedly at the behest of DMK Minister of State for Finance
SS Palanimanickam. Swamy said he would notify the Supreme Court. •
23 February: Swamy petitions the Supreme Court to overturn the trial-court dismissal of his request to charge Union Home Minister
P. Chidambaram. •
2 March: The government of India files a
review petition in Supreme Court of the court's 2 February order cancelling the 122 licenses, questioning the court's authority to supersede the first-come, first-served policy but not challenging the validity of the cancellations. Raja and Sistema (majority shareholder in
MTS India,
Uninor and other telecom companies) also file a SC review petition. •
4 April: Except for the government of India's partial review petition, the Supreme Court dismisses all 10 review petitions. Companies dismissed include Videocon Telecommunications, S Tel, Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Tata Teleservices, Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu), Etisalat DB Telecom and Idea Cellular. •
9 May: The Supreme Court grants bail to Siddharth Behura; and upheld RK Chandolia's bail. Raja requests bail. •
15 May: Bail granted to Raja after 15 months, on condition that he have court permission to visit
Tamil Nadu. •
6 June: The special court allows Raja to visit Tamil Nadu. •
3 July: Briefing the
joint parliamentary committee probing the case, the Enforcement Directorate said it has enough evidence to convict DMK chief
Karunanidhi's wife and daughter, Kanimozhi. •
31 July: Former DoT senior official A. K. Srivastava confirmed the CBI's allegation in his testimony, and Raja (as telecom minister) was the final authority on policy matters. In an earlier statement to CBI, he said that Raja had recorded the cut—off date of 1 October 2007 in a DoT file. •
1 August: The Supreme Court, in its advisory opinion on the 2G judgment, says that the implementation of the first-come, first-served policy was flawed. According to the
Chief Justice, "The moment you change the criterion and distort the policy, it ceases to be FCFS policy. If you insist on making payment at the last minute after changing the cut-off date, then it is not FCFS, it is an out-of-turn policy." •
3 August: In accordance with a Supreme Court directive, the government of India revises the spectrum value to ; this discredits the zero-loss theory and illustrates the revenue loss calculated by the CAG. •
9 August: The government again requests an extension from the Supreme Court (this time to 12 November) of the deadline to begin auctioning spectrum licences. After cancelling 122 licences in February, the court had given it four months to re-auction them (which had been extended to 31 August). •
11 November: After one year of trial, 77 of 154 witnesses have been
deposed.
2013 •
20 April: Communist Party of India senior MP
Gurudas Dasgupta accuses
Manmohan Singh of "dereliction of duty", alleging that the PM was aware of irregularities in the allocation of telecom licences. According to Dasgupta, in a November 2007 letter Kamal Nath advised the Prime Minister to establish a group of ministers to allocate spectrum. He also referred to a note from the Cabinet Secretary recommending that the assessed value of spectrum licences be increased. •
23 April: In a 112-page written statement to the joint parliamentary committee, Raja said that he met with
P. Chidambaram and Prime Minister Singh several times from November 2007 to July 2008 to inform them of all 2G-related decisions and Singh agreed with him.
2017 •
21 December: A special CBI court acquits everyone accused in the 2G spectrum case stating that the prosecution has failed to prove any charge against any of the accused, made in its well choreographed charge sheet.
2018 •
19 and 20 March 2018: The
Enforcement Directorate and
CBI respectively file appeals against trial court verdict in the
Delhi High Court.
2020 •
5 October 2020: The Delhi High Court begins day-to-day hearings on the appeals, which later gets postponed to 14 January 2021. •
23 November 2020: Justice Brijesh Sethi of Delhi High Court passed an order to release the appeals before him as "part-heard" to another judge as he was due to retire on 30 November 2020. The judge mentioned with heavy heart that his limited time was consumed in hearing and disposal of miscellaneous applications and petitions which were filed one after another on behalf of the respondents and hence he could not hear and decide the CBI and EDs appeals. All the petitions of the respondents (to the CBI and ED's petitions) were dismissed.
2022 •
3 March 2022: Supreme Court's three-judge bench of Justices
DY Chandrachud,
Surya Kant and
Vikram Nath rejects Loop Telecom's petition seeking refund of Rs 1,454.94 Crore paid as entry fee for 2G spectrum licences that were quashed on 2 February 2012 by the Supreme Court. Loop Telecom had sought refund of entry fee as its promoters had been acquitted by the trial court judgement on 21 December 2017. The Supreme Court rejected this argument and mentioned that, “The process leading up to the award of the UASLs (Unified Access Service Licences) and the allocation of the 2G spectrum was found to be arbitrary and constitutionally infirm” and “the need for an open and transparent bidding process for the allocation of natural resources was substituted by a process which was designed to confer unlawful benefits on a group of selected bidders by which the appellant benefitted”.
2023 •
13 April 2023: The Bar & Bench notes that after 5 years, 95 listings and 7 judges in the Delhi High Court, the CBI and the ED's appeals are yet to cross the stage of leave to appeal.
2024 •
22 March 2024: Delhi High Court's single-judge bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma agrees that the trial court's judgement requires deeper examination and re-appreciation of entire evidence and admits CBI's appeal. The court posts the case to 20 May for detailed arguments. ==Licence cancellations==