NEW DELHI: A day after DMK MP Kanimozhi said the prime minister should be summoned as a witness in the 2G spectrum scam case, former telecom minister A Raja made a similar demand. On Wednesday, the jailed Raja told a special CBI court that he would get Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then finance minister P Chidambaram and telecom minister Kapil Sibal summoned as witnesses to prove that the government did not incur any loss in allocating telecom licences.

"Today, I want to state that I would make the prime minister, the then finance minister and the present telecom minister witnesses in the case," Raja's counsel Sushil Kumar submitted before special CBI judge O P Saini.

Advancing additional arguments on behalf of Raja, his counsel said the moment it was established that there was no loss to the state exchequer, the whole case of cheating and conspiracy would go. Raja was referring to a statement made by the PM in Parliament that no loss was incurred to the exchequer in the grant of telecom licences.

Defending his client, Raja's counsel said that he (Raja) was made to pay the price for annoying big players in the telecom sector. Kumar also alleged that so far as other companies like Unitech and Reliance Telecom Ltd were concerned, CBI had failed to establish "any motive or consideration" for grant of licence. "There is no quid pro quo vis-a-vis Unitech. The CBI has nothing to show as to what motive or reward I had for granting UAS licence to Unitech. So far as Reliance Telecom Ltd and its three officials are concerned, no material has been brought on record as to what motive I had. Even CBI does not say anything against RTL as to what it earned," the defence counsel said.

After the conclusion of arguments by his counsel, Raja stepped in to argue for himself and sought the court's permission to express his "emotions". While blaming the media for his "ordeal", he said the entire case was based on media reports.

Discussing the first-come first-served (FCFS) policy, he said it was not a "rigid and static policy" and any departure in it did not constitute an offence. Reiterating that he did not take any unilateral decisions and that the PMO was informed at every step, Raja said, "CBI says that the FCFS policy was re-defined by me but the bigger question is whether it was deliberated upon and put into public domain or not. The documents show that I had informed the PMO and everybody relevant."

Raja said he redefined the policy because "in the times of my predecessors, Dayanidhi Maran and Arun Shourie, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea used to be there with few applications. But in my time, we had so many applications".

He also referred to the address of President Pratibha Patil to the House to drive home the point that he did no wrong and in fact, made mobile services accessible to all. "The President, who enjoys all three -- executive, legislative and judicial -- powers, had said the government was committed to spreading modern communication facilities. It is a certificate that I acted in accordance with the law," he said.