Bharti Airtel share price falls 2.3 per cent on CBI raids in 2G scam

Shares of telecom giant Bharti Airtel on Monday fell 2.3 per cent at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) following raids at its office by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday.

CBI on Saturday raided Bharti Airtel office in Gurgaon, another telecom firm Vodafone's offices in Mumbai and Delhi, and the houses of two former telecom officials after the agency filed a new case in allocation of additional 2G spectrum when the late Pramod Mahajan was telecom minister during the NDA government.

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The agency has also registered a case against unknown officials of Department of Telecommunication.

The Bharti scrip slipped 4.43 per cent to an intra-day low of Rs 386 in morning trade at BSE. It later recovered and closed the day's trade at Rs 388.50, down 2.3 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

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The probe agency had registered the case against the telecom major on Thursday evening for alleged irregularities in the grant of additional spectrum and causing a loss of approximately Rs 508.22 crore to the exchequer during the period 2001 and 2007.

According to CBI, the officials with the approval of Mahajan allegedly took a wrong decision on January 2001 to allocate additional spectrum beyond 6.2 megahertz in violation of the Technical Committee's report.

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They also allocated the companies spectrum till 10 megahertz at the fee of an incremental one per cent adjusted gross revenue (AGR), instead of charging two per cent of AGR for beyond 6.2 megahertz.

According to the norms prevailing at the time, till 8 megahertz, the company should have been charged two per cent.

- With inputs from IANS