New Delhi: The Congress on Monday dug out a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report tabled in Parliament last Tuesday and clubbed it with two earlier CAG reports to expose a massive Rs 69,381-crore telecom spectrum scam of the Modi government.
The latest in the series of telecom scams is the allotment of the microwave spectrum to the private businesses on “first come, first serve basis” rather than through auction, thus flagrantly violating the 2012 Supreme Court judgment in the 2G case, Congress spokesman Pawan Khera told a press conference here.
He ridiculed Prime Minister Modi’s boast in the BJP national council meeting here on Saturday that there is not a single allegation of corruption against his government despite the Rafale scam and many other scandals, the latest being the serious strictures by the CAG on his government for causing a massive losses to the government in the telecom business.
“It is not our allegation. It is the CAG’s reports that speak volumes on how the Modi government keeps promoting interests of the crony capitalists at the nation’s cost,” Khera said.
He said there is not one telecom scam but three scams in a row which the Modi government will have to explain in the light of the CAG slap. The first exposed by the CAG is the loss of Rs 560 crore to the public exchequer in not auctioning the microwave (MW) spectrums in 2015.
The second scam exposed by the Congress on the basis of an earlier CAG report was how the Modi government surreptitiously protected interests of the leading telecom companies by helping them avoid the rightful payments to the exchequer, thus facilitating a staggering Rs 45,000 crore plus of public money buried under the carpet.
The third spectrum is the unilateral and surreptitious way the government deferred the recovery of the spectrum auction amount by six years, causing an interest loss of Rs 23,821 alone to the public exchequer. “If we extrapolate the total cost to the people of India in these three spectrum scams by the Modi government, the country has lost a staggering amount of R 69,381 crore and the ruling BJP’s select cronies have been benefited,” Khera said, asserting that the CAG’s observations on the huge revenue loss is a testimony to the BJP government’s “crony policies,” in squandering away the nation’s wealth in favour of a select few.
He said the Modi government acted as a willful collaborator with its select cronies from among 101 applicants and artfully violated the Supreme Court”s 2012 ruling that “while transferring or alienating the natural resources, the State is duty-bound to adopt the method of auction by giving wide publicity so that all eligible persons can participate in the process.” Khera pointed out that the UPA government got a DoT order issued on 29.01.2011 that “in future, the spectrum will not be bundled with licence and spectrum will be made available only through market driven process.”
He said the CAG has faulted the Modi government for “no level field provided” by allowing the initial telecom spectrum providers (TSPs) to hold administratively allotted excess MWA carriers and allotment of MWA to one applicant in December 2015. He said: “CAG also found that Modi Govt”s telecom department had used an old method to collect some of the spectrum charges instead of the new method–which is based on revenue-sharing.”
The auditor also found the Cabinet had decided on 21.01.2015 for waiver of the spectrum charges on the defence department, but no such waiver for defence forces has been approved till date. Khera asked three fundamental questions to the government in this regard.
They are: 1. Whether it is a grotesque breach of public trust by BJP Government, which, in the past, had made a notional loss pegged by CAG in telecom sector into a major issue of transparency and corruption? 2. Whether BJP Government is acting as a willful collaborator with the select corporate entities in artfully violating the Feb 2012 Supreme Court judgment which makes it mandatory to auction spectrum? 3. Who benefits from this new ”governance model” of BJP Government? Is it not causing a loss of Rs. 69,381 Cr to the people of India?
