Although the Supreme Court is yet to decide whether home minister P. Chidambaram fixing 2G-spectrum price at base entry fee of Rs 1,658 crore as finance minister in UPA-I along with then telecom minister A. Raja had committed any wrong, the CBI, which strongly defended him has now projected the loss to the exchequer much higher than Rs 30,000 crore it mentioned in the chargesheet.
CBI’s 32-page status report submitted to the Supreme Court in response to specific allegations by NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) – the main petitioner – has said that it had discounted the 'no loss' theory propounded by telecom regulatory authority of India.
The agency said in fact the Trai experts’ report of August 19, 2011, submitted to the trial court has 'validated CBI figures' on loss caused to the exchequer in sale of 2G spectrum.
“Experts have kept the range of Rs 5,500-9,500 crore for pan-India licences depending upon various models. This comes to approximately 3.5 times of Rs 1,658 crore on the lower side,” the CBI status report said.
Copies of the report were for the first time given to the petitioner on the orders of the monitoring bench of justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly.
“Price of spectrum suggested by ministry of finance and agreed to in principle by the DoT, was a price indexed from the entry fee discovered in 2001 on the basis of change in adjusted gross revenue per MHZ per year during 2002-03 to 2007...”
“The change in adjusted gross revenue per MHZ per year during the year 2002-03 to 2007 was pegged at around 3.5 times by DoT during this time, and is an appropriate parameter for indexation on May 11, 2010,” the CBI report said.
Lawyers associated with NGO, CPIL said if CBI’s calculations were to be accepted, the loss would be far higher even more than double the agency’s own figure of Rs 30,000 crore projected in the chargesheet and it might be even more than Rs 70,000 crore by its own standard even though CAG figures were far higher.
The CBI gave the new projection by analysing the Trai report sent earlier to the trial court, after Bhushan in his note to the Supreme Court had alleged that “CBI had tried to make the scam appear to be less serious that it actually is by using an unheard yardstick of the change in adjusted gross revenue per MHZ per year during 2002-03 to 2007 to calculate the loss and comes up with a figure of Rs 30,000 crore.”
The CAG had given four different formulations on projected loss to the exchequer with pegging it at Rs 1.76 lakh core on the highest level keeping in view the pan-India range of the licence fee.