Congress says govt favouring select telecom companies

Congress asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the finance and telecom ministries to come clean on the issue.

THE CONGRESS on Wednesday accused the government of favouring select telecom companies by giving them six more years to pay for spectrum purchases.

Arguing that the move would cause a loss of Rs 23,821 crore to the exchequer, the party called the decision as “spectrum scam 2.0”.

The Telecom Commission last week extended the duration for spectrum payments to 16 years from 10 years in line with the recommendation of an inter-ministerial group set up by the government.

Accusing the Centre of “wilfully” deferring the recovery to ensure its “crony capitalists” benefited, the Congress asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the finance and telecom ministries to come clean on the issue.

The Congress communication department head, Randeep Surjewala, said the government has unilaterally and surreptitiously deferred recovery of the spectrum auction amount by six years. He said according to the terms of the auction, an upfront payment of 50 per cent of the final bid had to be made by the companies. And the rest was to be paid in 10 equal annual installments after 2019.

“In order to help the telecom companies in a clandestine manner, an inter-ministerial committee comprising the telecom and finance ministries was constituted. In flagrant violation of the Supreme Court judgment in the 2G case, and ignoring the inviolable terms of the auction, the committee decided to alter the auction terms by recommending payment of Rs 33,789.12 crore within 16 years (19 years after counting the no-payment period of first three years) instead of the original 10 years.”

“The telecom ministry and the telecom commission have put their stamps of approval on this blatant abuse of authority and misuse of discretion to cause a loss to public exchequer. It is now awaiting the seal of approval from the cabinet,” he said.

The Congress argued that the government unilaterally changed the terms of auction to favour select companies, violating the Supreme Court judgment in the 2G case. “The BJP government’s plea that three telecom companies are facing adverse financial conditions arising on account of competitive pressure cannot be a ground to alter terms of the auction to provide relief to them,” he said.

BJP spokesman G V L Narsimha Rao said: “Look who is speaking. India’s Notoriously Corrupt (INC) made similar baseless allegations last year based on a CAG report and that turned out to be a UPA-era scam.”