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Journalism of Courage
Former telecom regulator Pradip Baijal has alleged that the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had asked him to cooperate with then telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran since non-cooperation could compromise his government. According to Baijal, Maran warned him of “serious consequences” if he gave the unified licensing recommendations despite being told not to.
In his self-published book The Complete Story of Indian Reforms: 2G, Power and Private Enterprise-A Practitioner’s Diary , Baijal, a 1966 Madhya Pradesh IAS officer, also alleged that after a routine meeting in 2004, Ratan Tata told him that Maran had threatened him if he did not accept the merger of Tata Sky with Sun TV, a television channel promoted by his brother Kalanidhi Maran.
“Looking back, I believe he (Tata) probably mentioned this to me to assess whether I, as a broadcasting regulator, would try to follow Dayanidhi Maran’s instructions to damage the new Tata Sky DTH channel,” he wrote in his book.
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Baijal, an accused in the 2G spectrum allocation case, also claimed that the CBI wanted him to “implicate” Arun Shourie and Ratan Tata. “They (CBI) warned me in each case that I would be harmed if I didn’t cooperate. Incidentally, this was exactly what the eminent economist Prime Minister had told me would happen if I did not cooperate in their scheme of things in the 2G case,” Baijal wrote in an apparent reference to the 2G case and disinvestment issues.
Maran, according to Baijal, continued to ride roughshod over the PM, and directed his officers not to attend any meetings of two committees appointed by the PM. “He also told me that he was ‘Prime Minister, Telecom’ and would take all decisions on telecom, and that I had no business meeting the PM. He warned that I would come to severe harm if I did not comply with his instructions. He was proved right, since I did face severe hardships later,” wrote Baijal.
“I can only surmise that they were all working in tandem possibly along with the PM, Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal at different stages and were guiding the CBI enquiry, getting files removed and, making false statements in the media to make a case against the erstwhile TRAI,” he further wrote.
