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New Delhi, Feb 19 (IANS) A Delhi court Tuesday granted two weeks' more time to the CBI to submit documents relating to the resolution passed by three telecom firms for seeking additional spectrum during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime. Special CBI Judge O.P. Saini granted time to the agency after prosecutor K.K. Goyal sought time to file documents, saying that "they are working on the court's query and they need some more time to go through the documents". The court posted the matter for March 8. The court was to take cognizance on Feb 11 of the charge sheet filed against mobile firms Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Sterling Cellular for alleged irregularities in allocation of excess spectrum during the NDA regime. It asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to file documents. Noting that these telecom firms must have approached the government first for seeking additional spectrum and they must have also passed a resolution in this regard, the court sought the related documents. On Dec 21 last year, the probe agency named former telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh and the three telecom firms as accused in the charge sheet for criminal conspiracy and charges under provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act for causing a loss of about Rs.846 crore to the national exchequer. The agency told the court that additional spectrum was allotted July 17, 2002, to Bharti Cellular (now Bharti Airtel) and Sterling Cellular (now Vodafone Mobile Service) for the Delhi metro area, and Hutchison Max (now Vodafone India) for Mumbai metro area.
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