Kapil Sibal signals that the government will not take the opposition's accusations lying down but will "go to the people" if it is not allowed to speak in Parliament.
Countering the opposition’s continued demand for a joint parliamentary committee to inquire into the alleged scandal in the allocation of mobile telephony spectrum, Union telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal called the Rs1.76 lakh crore loss estimate by the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) "completely erroneous.”
Sibal echoed his predecessor A Raja’s defence of his actions, claiming that the low spectrum price helped to keep operators’ expenses low, and the benefits were in turn passed on to consumers.
“We respect the CAG, but we are pained at some of the figures and methodology adopted by the CAG which has no basis," Sibal told a press conference. "We believe that exercise by the CAG [its report on the 2G spectrum allocation] was fraught with errors. We object to that."
The CAG had brought out a stinging indictment of the actions of Sibal’s predecessor and DMK politician Raja. In its report, the CAG had pointed out that Raja arbitrarily changed the rules of the allocation process, resulting in the allocation of grossly undervalued telecom licences to a pre-determined set of companies. The companies then sold stakes in their telecom arms — which had nothing but the licences — to foreign firms at up to five times the price at which they had acquired the licences from the ministry.
Taking what the foreign firms paid for their stakes as the real value of the licences, the CAG had calculated that the exchequer could have got an extra Rs67,364 crore if it had sold the licences directly to these firms instead of going through the ‘middlemen’.
The country's auditor also pointed out that if the spectrum was compared to equivalent amount of 3G (third generation) spectrum, the loss would be around Rs1.76 crore.
The CAG had said that not only were licences sold for a fraction of their real value, but the allocation process was unfairly manipulated so that the licences ended up in the hands of a few operators who seemed to have had previous knowledge of the arbitrary changes of methodology.
On this point, Sibal seemed to agree with the CAG. “We do believe that prima facie there was something wrong in the procedure adopted in the allocation of 2G spectrum," the minister said, adding that there seems to be “criminal culpability” in the whole affair — implying that laws were broken.
Sibal’s aggressive stance towards the CAG, which he accused of failing to do justice to itself, signals a shift in the government’s strategy in dealing with continued opposition demands for a parliamentary inquiry.
The new strategy would involve pinning down the responsibility of
devising the ‘subsidised licence’ regime on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government that ruled from 1998 to 2004.
If the NDA had not started giving licences in 2001-02 at prices discovered in the 1999 auctions, Raja, too, would not have issued licences at 1999 prices, Sibal said.
He said the government intends to “go to the people” with its side of the story. "We will bring out the truth before the people about the
entire telecom issue since 2001. It is our duty," he said.
Sibal also revealed that the government had collected Rs93 crore of the amount of Rs219 crore imposed as penalty from new telecom operators for flouting network-rollout deadlines.
Those who have paid the penalties are Etisalat DB, Loop Telecom, Uninor, Sistema-Shyam and Aircel Cellular.
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