Vodafone, Bharti Offices Searched

India’s top federal probe body is conducting searches in the offices of two of the country’s top mobile phone operators and former telecom officials in connection with a probe into alleged irregularities in bandwidth allocation between 2001 and 2003, broadening the scope of its existing investigations. The Central Bureau of Investigation is searching offices of Bharti Airtel Ltd. and the Indian unit of Vodafone Group PLC, a spokeswoman for the agency said. In separate statements, Vodafone India, the country’s third largest mobile phone company by subscribers, confirmed searches at both its Mumbai and Delhi offices, while market leader Bharti Airtel said it was providing details to the authorities. Both companies said they were in compliance with existing rules.

The CBI was also searching the residence of Shyamal Ghosh, a former telecom secretary, and J.R. Gupta, another former telecom ministry bureaucrat, as part of the probe into alleged faulty spectrum allocation during former telecom minister Pramod Mahajan’s tenure. Messrs. Ghosh and Gupta couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. Mr. Mahajan, who died in 2006, was telecom minister between 2001 and 2003, in a government led by current opposition party, the Bhartiya Janata Party, or BJP, which has been leading an anticorruption campaign against the current ruling Congress Party-led government. The fresh searches and likely charges come as a trial began earlier this month in another telecom case — popularly called the 2G scam — against former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja and 17 others, for alleged rigging in granting telecom licenses in 2008. This, the CBI says, resulted in the government losing about $7 billion in potential revenue. As many as 14 people, including Mr. Raja and lawmaker Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, have been arrested in this probe. Ms. Karunanidhi, who is the daughter of Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam political party leader and an ally of India’s Congress party-led coalition government. Mr. Raja also belongs to the DMK.

Apart from the 2G scam, the government has been plagued with a raft of corruption cases, including mismanagement of the Commonwealth Games last year, the “note-for-vote” case, and one where a housing property meant for war widows was occupied by senior government officials, bureaucrats and army officers. The government last month had to concede to the demand of a fasting activist, Anna Hazare, to make a proposed anticorruption law more stringent. Charges in the latest case are likely to be filed by the end of Saturday, the CBI spokeswoman said. The BJP said that the current government was misusing the CBI to target the opposition party and distract attention from its corruption probes into the current ruling government. Congress officials weren’t immediately available for comments. The case has cast a shadow over what was once seen as one of the most successful and rapidly growing sectors in the Indian market, as easing government rules allowed private firms to turn India into one of the world’s largest mobile phone markets by subscribers.

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