The petition of the Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal has been accepted by the Supreme Court to challenging a special court’s summons to him to appear before it as an accused in the 2G spectrum allocation case here in New Delhi.
The bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir posted the matter to 8 April.
Special court judge O.P. Saini had summoned Mittal to appear before him on 11 April on the grounds that as the head of BhartiAirtel when the alleged irregularities in spectrum allocation happened, he was responsible for his company’s actions and had knowledge of the allocation.
Saini has also summoned Essar Group vice-chairman Ravi Ruia, who was then a director in one of accused companies, Sterling Cellular Ltd, and Asim Ghosh, then managing director of accused firm Hutchison Max Telecom Pvt. Ltd.
Their names were not mentioned in the chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation that’s probing the case. But Saini ruled that Mittal, Ruia and Ghosh were “prima facie” in “control of affairs” of their companies.
“As such, they represented the directing mind and will of companies and their state of mind was that of the companies,” the judge had said, adding, “They are/were ‘alter-ego’ of their respective companies.”
On 21 December, the CBI filed a chargesheet against former telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh and Bharti, Hutchison and Sterling (now part of Vodafone India Ltd), but didn’t name any individuals.
