Ravi Shankar Prasad & Manish Tewari are not revealing full facts

On Dec 20, 2014

Telecom minister Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad has not revealed full facts nor has former minister Mr Manish Tewari.

Mr Prasad says Fine Tech Corporation is an independent entity. THE FACT, HOWEVER, is it is a Reliance Group company (all details are given in the press release below).
Rule 294 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business of Rajya Sabha require Mr Prasad to declare his pecuniary interests, has he done so ?
Why is he silent on the status of department of telecom notice to Reliance Jio in 4G case?
Mr Manish Tewari states he wrote a letter to JPC chairman saying he had no interests in telecom sector after 2005, how was he getting a Rs 5 lakh monthly retainership till October 2012 ?
When did the monthly retainership payment to Mr Tewari from RIL actually stop ?

The Aam Aadmi Party had yesterday (Thursday, Dec 18) released a few documents of public interest pertaining to union telecom minister Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP and former union Minister Mr Manish Tewari of the Congress.

The documents showed that both of them had retainership arrangements with Reliance group just before they were elevated to their ministerial berths. This relationship raised ethical questions, since both of them went on to head ministries that involved substantial interests of the Reliance group.

It also raised legal questions of Conflict of Interest as both of them were members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that investigated 2G telecom spectrum Scam and the entire Telecom sector deals between 1998 and 2011.

We asked them to come clean on the facts, failing which we demanded resignation of Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad who continues to be in a position that can compromise public interest.

In a series of tweets last night Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad responded to these charges. Mr Manish Tewari has released some documents in his defence. Both of them have accused the AAP of not doing its home work before making such serious allegations. Some newspapers have also carried clarification by Reliance. Far from absolving the two, their responses have further confirmed our worst fears and suspicions.

Significantly, neither of them nor Reliance has questioned the authenticity of the papers made public by AAP. Nor have they claimed that they did not receive the amount. Reliance has confirmed the payments. So our main point stands confirmed.

It is undeniable now that Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad received Rs. 7 lakh per month from FineTech Corporation Pvt Ltd from April 2013 to March 2014.

Similarly Mr Tewari received Rs. 5 lakh per month from Reliance Industries Ltd. from 2011 to October 2012.

While both of them have confirmed the date of cessation of this arrangement, it is still not clear when the payments began. We demand that both of them should come out clean on the entire nature, duration and amount of payments received from any Reliance group company.

Mr Tewari admits that the payments were a “retainership”, but strangly Mr Prasad claims that he has not received “any retainership” and calls it a “professional relationship”.

Can Mr Prasad answer if a flat payment of 7 lakhs per month for vaguely specified activities is not retainership, then what is it?

What was the nature of services that Mr Prasad and Mr Tewari were providing to Reliance so as to deserve this amount every month?

While Mr Tewari got his payment directly from RIL, Mr Prasad claims that he never appeared for Reliance.

The telecom minister’s clarification to the media claims that Fine Tech Corporation Pvt Ltd is an independent entity. Facts belie his claim.

Fine Tech Corporation Private Limited is a company of the Reliance group with its corporate office at Reliance Corporate Park, 5TTC Industrial Area, Thane BelapurRoad,Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai-400701.

It has three directors: Mr.ShankarNatarajan, Mr.Jaishanker Prasad Kanhaiya Lal Bansal, Mr.Rajagopal Subramanian. These three are also directors in various other companies of Reliance Group. Ownership structure of Fine Tech Corporation Private Limited:


Shareholder’s Name	No. of Shares Held	Percentage
Jubilant Auto Fuels Trading Private Limited	1,900	15%
Steadfast Fuel Trading Private Limited	1,900	15%
Reliance Global Trading Private Limited	2,400	19%
Reliance Tankages Private Limited	6,200	50%
Issued, Subscribed, Paid-up shares	12,400	100%

Both Mr Prasad and Mr Tewari have claimed that the payments stopped once they became a minister. This may be correct and we have nowhere claimed to the contrary. Mr Prasad does not clearly say that he has received no money from Fine Tech after becoming minister and a clarification regarding that is in order. The main point, however, was about the ethical and political propriety of heading ministries that dealt with companies that retained them till they took up their position.

The legal infringement pertained to their non-disclosure of these payments while being members of the JPC.

Rule 294 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business of Rajya Sabha required Mr Prasad, a member of RS then, to declare his pecuniary interests in Register of Members’ Interest before taking part in any discussion related to that interest in the house or any committee of the House.

It was incumbent on him to disclose his relationship with Reliance since he was a JPC member on 2G and other Telecom matters from 2011.

The purview of JPC was to probe from 1998 to 2011 irregularities in telecom. It needs to be recalled that 4G auction took place in April 2010 which led to RIL entering into Telecom sector.

Mr Abhishek Singhvi was first nominated by Congress to become JPC member and he relinquished citing he has deal the files of IDEA and other telecom companies. More over JPC was also dealing WLL technology fraud during 2001- when undivided Reliance entered telecom field.His silence on this question suggests that he did not do this required disclosure.

Mr Manish Tewari has released a copy of his letter to Mr PC Chako, the Chair of JPC in which he claims to have disclosed his interests. It is clear from the letter that the disclosure was not on his own but in response to media reports about his conflict of interest.

The letter claims that he did not advise or represent “any company or any entity connected with the Telecom sector” after 30 September 2005. He fails to mention his ongoing retainership arrangement with Reliance Industries Ltd, which had taken over InfoTel, the winner of 4G spectrum auction, in June 2010 . So, instead of supporting his case, the letter actually shows that Manish Tewari may have misled the JPC.

Why is Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad silent on whether he is sitting over DoT notice to Reliance Jio in the 4G case? After the Supreme Court notice to DoT on Mr.PrashantBhushan’s case (in April 2014) and other complaints filed to DoT/PM & CVC by other persons – DoT officials prepared a notice to Reliance Join asking for reasons on why its contract should not be cancelled ? Why is the minister for telecom Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad sitting over this notice for the past three months and not allowing DoT’s Access Service Division to issue notice to Reliance ?

He has given no concrete response to this. Simply claims that no favours have been done to Reliance and will not be done.

The AAP demands that since Mr Prasad is not ready to relinquish the charge of telecom ministry he should be removed from the union council of ministers for this gross impropriety.

His response is to say that he has been involved in exposing corruption in fodder scam and 2G scam etc. Also claims that he was a lawyer of Ramlalla in Ramjanmabhoomi case. Can this be a ground for exemption from scrutiny of his own conduct ? (ENDS)

(Pls find attached Hindi Press Release also)