New Delhi, July 24
The going seems to be getting tougher for A Raja in the 2G spectrum scam with the CBI today telling the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was consistently misled by the former telecom minister.

The CBI gave the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram a clean chit, saying there is no criminal culpability on his part. It also said it does not see a need to question Chidambaram, now the Home Minister and under whom the CBI works.

The JPC had summoned CBI's Director AP Singh to brief it on the progress of the investigations in the 2G spectrum scam, which has led to the cancellation of 122 licences by the Supreme Court.

When the JPC members questioned the CBI on why it had not investigated the role of Chidambaram, who was Finance Minister when the scam took place and officials from the Prime Minister's Office, the CBI said they did not find enough evidence to merit questioning of Chidambaram.

In an earlier deposition former Telecom Secretary Siddarth Behura, in an attempt to put the onus of issuing of telecom licences in 2008 on a first-come-first-served basis on Raja, had told the JPC that he found advancing the cut-off date to grant licences as unusual and had raised the issue with the former telecom minister.

Behura, himself a key accused in the 2G scam, told the panel that the decision to change the cut-off date from October 30, 2007 to September 25, 2007 was taken before he joined the department.

He had informed the JPC that all the decisions like revision in cut-off date, acceptance of the TRAI recommendations by the Telecom Commission and re-interpretation of the first-come-first-served policy took place before he took up the posting in 2008. No major decision was taken during his tenure.