Former telecom minister A Raja and his aides, former personal secretary R K Chandolia and former telecom secretary Siddharth behera have been remanded to the custody of the CBI for the next five days. The three had been produced by the agency before special CBI judge O P Saini on Thursday morning.

The CBI had successfully plead for a five-day custody, and was directed by the court to file a chargesheet by March. Judge Saini allowed Raja's a counsel a ten-minute private conversation with the tainted leader.

Earlier reports:

Raja, aides to produced at court today

Former telecom minister A Raja will be produced in Patiala House court on Thursday, a day after he was arrested by the centreal bureau of investigation (CBI) in the 2G spectrum allotment scam.

Raja's personal secretary R K Chandolia and former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura will also appear at court after the troika's first night at the Tihar jail.

Raja is also reported to have resigned from his post as the propaganda secretary of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Raja's arrest came a day after DMK chief Karunanidhi met the prime minister in the national capital.

However, the party has issued a statement in support of Raja saying that his arrest does not prove guilt. But the party has not commented on Raja's offer to resign.

Related report:

Now Pawn is arrested, days after Kapil Sibal denies loss in 2G scam

The Telecom minister had rubbished CAG's estimate of Rs 1.76 crore loss in 2G allotments

Former telecom minister A Raja has been arrested, along with his two key aides RK Chandolia and Siddharth Behura, by the central bureau of investigation (CBI) in connection with the 2G scam. Raja was arrested shortly after a round of questioning by sleuths on Wednesday morning.

Raja's arrest came just days after the new telecom minister Kapil Sibal sought to downplay the alleged scam claiming the 2G allotments had caused no loss to the exchequer. Sibal had rubbished the CAG's estimate of a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The supreme court had, however, directed the CBI to ignore Sibal's comments and carry on with its probe into the scam.

It is now amply clear that the government delayed action for as long as it could and alluded to the compulsions of coalition politics for its inaction. As we had argued first in our cover story, in the November 16-30 issue of Governance Now magazine, the DMK depends more on the Congress party for its survival than vice versa. Therefore, the central government's inaction against the former telecom minister despite his gross misconduct cannot be explained away by the Congress party's alliance with A Raja's Tamil Nadu-based party which continues to be part of the UPA after Raja's arrest.

The CBI questioned the former minister for the fourth time in connection with the funding and allegedly showing favours to some telecom companies in granting 2G spectrum between October 2007 and 2008.

Raja, who was questioned earlier on December 24 and 25 last year and January 31, was called to the CBI office this morning and quizzed, official sources said.

Related Story

Andimuthu Raja's love for poetry is believed to have got him close to DMK supremo M Karunanidhi for a blazing political career but the script went awry in a rare case of a former union minister having to undergo the ignominy of arrest consumed by the 2G Spectrum scam.

A prominent Dalit face of DMK, 47-year-old Raja had come a long way from being a lawyer and a block-level leader in rural Tamil Nadu to Union Minister of State and finally a Cabinet minister before he was forced to quit in November last.

The end of his stint as Union Telecom Minister mired in a huge controversy came in a brutal rush after days of stalemate and now his arrest comes at a critical time for the DMK ahead of the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

The dalit factor helped Raja get early breaks in his political career, like becoming a Union Minister at the age of 35--in the NDA government in 1999. And he never looked back holding several portfolios both in the NDA and UPA regimes at the Centre.

He became Telecom Minister in May 2007. And again in 2009, despite 2G scam allegations and the high-profile Dayanidhi Maran being in the race for the post, for being a rare Dalit DMK leader and for his loyalty to M Karunanidhi, who too is a poet and writer himself.

Raja's choice for the high-profile Telecom Ministry surprised many in the political corridors in Delhi, but Karunanidhi and his DMK stood by him all along despite widespread allegations against him over his involvement in alleged irregularities in the 2G spectrum allocation.

Raja was born on May 10, 1963 in Perambalur in Tamil Nadu and often likes to reminisce that he had to go to Trichy for an education as there were no facilities nearer home. In Trichy, Raja got a BSc and then his law degrees. He was a student leader of the Dravidar Kazhagam, the parent body of the DMK.

As an interesting aside, Raja writes poetry in Tamil.

His literary skills are believed to have got him close to Karunanidhi.

Raja was a student leader of the Dravidar Kazhagam, the parent body of the DMK. From a block level leader he rose quickly and was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996. Raja earlier represented Perambalur and now represents the Nilgiris constituency in Tamil Nadu and this is his fourth term in Parliament after being re-elected in 2009.

His catchphrase in that election campaign was "Oru kilo arisi oru rupa, oru hello 50 paisa" (One kg rice one rupee, a hello on the phone 50 paisa).

When he resigned on November 14, Raja again said, "I brought revolution in the Telecom sector." But his bid to take credit has been neutralised by the controversial 2G Spectrum allocation.

Raja hit headlines for the wrong reasons ever since he allocated license for the 2G bandwidth in 2007 soon after he took over the coveted portfolio.
Raja has been facing criticism after he decided in 2007 to bring in new players and give licenses and spectrum as per the existing policy of "first-cum-first-serve" basis and rejected demands for auctioning.

After the licenses were given January 2008 at 2001 prices of Rs. 1,658 crore, two of the telecom operators who got spectrum sold part of the equity at much higher premium.

This led to controversy as it was felt that the spectrum allocation had led to a huge loss to public exchequer.

Various agencies including CBI, CVC and CAG started independent investigations into the alleged scam.

The CAG has put the loss at Rs. 1.40 lakh crore on the basis of new licences of 2008 and Rs. 36,000 crore on giving licenses to existing operators for giving additional spectrum beyond contractual limit of 6.2 Mhz.

Raja had been pleading innocence ever since he was targeted by the Opposition and has been maintaining that he had just followed the procedures laid down by his predecessors.

The DMK MP would be confronted with some questions and documents recovered from the computers seized during raids conducted by the investigation agency earlier at his premises.

Raja was on earlier occasions questioned at length on the circumstances leading to spectrum allocation which has been criticised severely by the Central Vigilance Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).

He was also asked about his conversations with corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and the reasons of advancing the cut-off date of allocation of the spectrum in 2007.

Raja was forced to resign on November 14 last year in the wake of the CAG report which held that the spectrum allocation at undervalued prices resulted in a notional loss of Rs.1.76 lakh crore to the state exchequer.

Raja got the telecom portfolio on May 18, 2007 and was re-elected as a Member of the 15th Lok Sabha and continued as Telecom Minister from May 31, 2009, till November 14, 2010 before he tendered his resignation.

The Supreme Court has asked CBI and Enforcement Directorate to submit status reports on their investigations into the 2G spectrum case to it by February 10 when the case will come up for further hearing.

In its FIR, CBI mentioned the loss as Rs 22,000 crore based on CVC findings which had referred the case to it.

Radia was quizzed by CBI last week as she had come under the scanner after her tapped telephonic conversations with various influential people including industrialists, politicians and journalists became public.

CBI has also questioned former Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chief Pradip Baijal, a 1966 batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, and former Telecom Secretaries Siddarth Behura and D S Mathur in connection with the case.