Holding the Department of Telecom (DoT) officials responsible for the 2G spectrum mess, the CBI Special Judge OP Saini in his judgment said that there was no clarity in the policies and guidelines which added to the confusion to the 2G spectrum allocation. The special judge also said that policy decisions of the DoT were “scattered” in different official files and were thus, difficult to trace and understand.
In his judgement, Judge Saini observed that due to various “actions and inactions” of the Government officials concerned of the DoT, nobody believed the version of DoT and a huge scam was seen by everyone where there was none. “These factors compelled people to conjecture about a big scam,” Saini said.
On the lack of clarity of policies and guidelines pertaining to 2G spectrum allocation framed by the DoT, Judge Saini said the guidelines have been framed in such technical language that meaning of many terms are not clear even to DoT officers. “When the officers of the department themselves do not understand the departmental guidelines and their glossary, how can they blame companies/ others for violation of the same. The worst thing is that despite knowing that the meaning of a particular term was ambiguous,” the Judgement read.
“Large part of the controversy relates to interpretation of clause 8, dealing with substantial equity. The terms used in this clause include “Associate”, “Promoter”, “Stake” etc. No one in the DoT knows their meaning, despite the fact that the Guidelines were framed by the DoT itself. The interpretation of these words is haunting the DoT since these words were first used, but no steps were taken to assign them a specific meaning,” the judgment said.
The CBI court further noted that notes recorded by various officers in the files are in highly illegible handwriting which are difficult to read and understand. “A wrong impression and understanding is created by such badly written notes. Furthermore, the notes are either cryptic, even telegraphic, or extremely lengthy, recorded in highly technical and layered language, which cannot easily be understood by others, but can conveniently be used for finding fault with the superior authorities for agreeing to or disagreeing from it, as the case may be. Notes have also been recorded on extreme margins of the note sheet, some of which have become frayed with the passage of time and cannot be read and understood properly,” the judgement said.
It observed that documents relating to one issue were placed or inserted whimsically in any file without any regard for relevance of the issue and it was very difficult to know as to how many files were opened for dealing with a particular issue and why. “When documents are not traceable easily and readily and policy issues are scattered haphazardly in so many files, it becomes difficult for anyone to understand the issues,” it said.