Shivraj Patil committee report an attempt to save A Raja: BJP

The BJP today dubbed the claims of the Shivraj Patil committee on spectrum allotments since 2003 as an attempt to bail out former telecom minister A Raja and insisted that only a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe could bring out the truth.

"The BJP will comprehensively respond after going through the contents of the report. However, this whole attempt is also designed to bail out Mr Raja and the illegalities committed by him," BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Patil committee's report was unveiled by telecom minister Kapil Sibal in Delhi today. It claims that all spectrum allotments since 2003 by successive governments were "procedurally wrong".

"The NDA has nothing to hide. We have ourselves said that let JPC examine every allocation from 1998 itself," Prasad said.

BJP maintained that NDA was proud of its achievements in "revolutionising" the telecom sector and mobile telephony.

"The entire queue (of telephone connection seekers) was done away with. The incoming calls which used to be charged at Rs16 per minute became almost negligible. In the revenue sharing system the number of players gave more money to the government than licence fee because the entire area expanded and mobile became affordable to the poor," Prasad said.

BJP further claimed that teledensity, which was 0.8% grew in a phenomenonal manner due to pro-consumer and pro-people policies executed in a fair manner by the NDA government.