Though the 2G issue has become the main reason for the political confrontation between the Congress and BJP with communications minister Kapil Sibal blaming the NDA for the “faulty” first-come-first-serve policy on allocation of spectrum, the UPA government’s review petition to the apex court, ironically, is all praise for both the polices introduced by BJP ministers Pramod Mahajan and Arun Shourie respectively.
Though the Congress leaders had been attacking Mahajan for introducing the migration scheme in 1999, which shifted from revenue sharing to licence fee regime vis-a-vis private telecom companies and Arun Shourie for bringing FCFS policy in 2003 for allocating spectrum, the review petition moved in the Supreme Court for reconsidering its judgment on the cancellation of 2G licences, in fact has hailed the twin polices as the “most beneficial” for improving teledensity in rural and semi-urban areas.
“Had the court applied its mind, it would have had to consider that in the prevailing facts and circumstances at the time the policy was adopted, the policy of FCMS may have been more advantageous to the state in maximising revenue in the long term by promoting the growth and penetration of wireless service in semi-urban and rural areas,” review petition said pointing out that the UPA government in its draft National Telecom Policy-2012 had stressed that the same policies should continue till 2020.
The petition has cited figures to show how both, migration scheme and the FCFS had resulted in a quantum jump in the teledensity.
In rural areas teledensity, which was a negligible 1.73 per cent in 2001 jumped to 36 per cent by 2005 and in the urban areas, it phenomenally rose to 161 per cent from a mere 27 per cent during this period.
If the FCFS policy was allowed to continue, “the NTP-2012 drafted by the (UPA) government, has indicated that the rural broadband target for 60 per cent will be achieved by 2017 and 100 per cent by 2020,” the petition said urging the top court to take into consideration the “wide gap” between rural and urban teledensity.
The UPA government submitted that “the judgment erred in holding the FCFS policy to be flawed and contrary to the principle of NTP-1999 by selectively judging the policy against those principles (in NTP-1999) which appealed to the court on merits, i.e. the spectrum should be utilised efficiently, economically, rationally and optimally and ignoring those parts (of NTP-1999) that did not appeal to it on merits, i.e. consideration of promoting growth, affordability, penetration of services in urban and rural areas.”
“The court erred in assuming that the statement in NTP-1999 that the spectrum must be utilised efficiently, economically, rationally, optimally (and) it precluded the policy of FCFS as the basis for allocating spectrum and it only envisaged auction as a method for allocation of spectrum,” the petition said, adding the NTP-1999 “in no way preclude the FCFS policy, nor does it necessitate a public auction of spectrum.”
Strangely such a strong” defence of the NTP-1999 and FCFS has come from the UPA government in a review petition while it was not so “explicit” in its reply affidavits filed earlier before the court had marathon hearing in the case.
On the other hand Congress and BJP continue to take “confrontationist postures” on telecom policy before the jpc hearings.