Raja of Telecom

Raja represents the Nilgiris constituency of Tamil Nadu and is a member of the DMK political party.

A Raja  was born on 10 May 1963 and is a member of the 14th Lok Sabha of India. He represents the Nilgiris constituency of Tamil Nadu and is a member of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) political party. He is a Cabinet minister. And boy, does he love his job! But he did offer to give it up once and, unfortunately for the country, that opportunity might never come again.

His Wikipedia page says that on 17 October 2008, Minister for Communications and Information Technology A Raja, submitted his post-dated resignation to DMK party chief M Karunanidhi over the killings of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka, like all the other DMK ministers. Question is: how post-dated was it?

If the letter is still valid, it should be accepted with immediate effect. God knows, the honourable minister is never going to do anything as foolish again. Not after he has realised, on the back of allegations of telecom scam after telecom scam, how much money there is to be made as a Cabinet minister in a coalition government.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the now well-known telecom minister is being investigated by the CBI in connection with a slew of irregularities in the allocation of 2G wireless radio spectrum and licences to nine private operators in 2007-08. All of which, it is estimated, may have cost the government Rs 60,000 crore.

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley says, “In terms of monetary value, it is the largest scam in independent India. It is a monumental scam. It cannot be a subject of controversy. It is a mathematical calculation.”

What’s more, there’s more. This isn’t the only controversy the poker-faced minister’s head is being called on a platter for. Reports have emerged in certain sections of the media that all is not above the board, even with respect to the allocation of the BSNL’s WiMax franchise. A Delhi-based English daily has reported that the ministry’s technical committee has shortlisted six companies, of which five are floated by Raja’s crony Sanjay Kapoor and the sixth, a BPO, owned by a former MP and Congress leader from Tamil Nadu.

About The Author

Avinash Subramaniam