‘Divided bureaucracy stymied Cong. defence of 2G’

Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said the bureaucracy was deeply divided over the 2G spectrum allocation case and that prevented the UPA-II government from putting up a strong defence of its telecom policy.

He was speaking at a panel discussion following the launch of the former Law Minister Salman Khurshid’s book Spectrum Politics.

“After reading Salman’s book, it seems that the bureaucracy was deeply divided. PMO, Department of Telecom, Ministry of Finance — each one had a point of view. Therefore, at the bureaucratic level, they were not able to put forward a coherent strong defence which the ministers could have taken up and taken to a political platform,” Mr. Chidamabaram told journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, who moderated the discussion.

The former minister was responding to a question on whether Congress leaders had left the DMK’s A. Raja, then telecom minister, to fend for himself.

Former Telecom Regulator and bureacrat Rahul Khullar pointed out that while Mr Raja’s decision of giving out many licences with limited spectrum was questionable, revenue maximisation from auctions wasn’t the only way to use scare resources.

Mr Khullar suggested that the CAG’s report on the presumptive loss from the spectrum auctions could have made bureaucrats hesitant to take decisions.