Bringing the BJP-led NDA regime into the 2G scam investigation ambit, telecom minister Kapil Sibal on Thursday announced setting up a one-man committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Shivaraj V. Patil, to probe whether the 2G licences and spectrum were allocated in a transparent manner between 2001 to 2009. Mr Patil will submit his report to the telecom ministry within four weeks.
“We are looking at internal departmental procedures adopted by the telecom department (DoT) during 2001 and 2009 for the issuance of telecom licences and allocation of spectrum to all the licences. Whether the procedures were fair and transparent. Also identify instances of lack of transparency,” said Mr Sibal. The committee will suggest remedial measures. The probe will be based only on the files and the records with the DoT and there will be no questioning of any former telecom minister.
This announcement comes a day after the Supreme Court’s observation as to why the CBI should not probe the entire issue of spectrum allocation from 2001? This investigation will not only cover the 122 licences issued in 2008 to new players, but also extra spectrum allocated to older players without any up front charge. The CAG in its report had said that the former telecom minister A. Raja had deviated from his department’s policy to favour few firms in granting 2G licences in 2008, which led to a loss of `1.76 lakh crores to the exchequer. It had also said that seven private firms, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone, Idea and Aircel had got additional spectrum beyond contractual limit of 6.2 MHz for free. CAG had estimated that issuance of spectrum beyond contractual limit had resulted in a loss of `36,993 crores to exchequer.
“The committee will look if spectrum was given free, to whom it was given free and why it was given free,” said Mr Sibal. He added that widening the preview of the probe to NDA regime also has nothing to do with Tata group chairman Ratan Tata’s statement questioning the sanity of polices followed during the BJP rule.
Meanwhile, rejecting the one-man panel to look into the spectrum allocation procedure, the BJP said it was a breach of parliamentary privilege that instead of informing this from the floor of the House when the Parliament is in session, the announcement was made outside. The Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said, “The committee doesn’t even come under the purview of the Commission of Inquiry Act.” The party reiterated its stand on a JPC probe into the 2G spectrum issue.

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‘War of words unfortunate’
AGE CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI

Dec. 9: Telecom minister Kapil Sibal on Thursday termed unfortunate the war of words going on between new and old GSM operators and cautioned that such practices is not healthy for the growth of the sector.
“What I find today is very unfortunate, some operators are at war with others. This is because at any given point of time they felt that they had been discriminated against,” he said. Mr Sibal said that he will ensure that all the operators have a level playing field so that they don’t have any grudge.