New Delhi: Smarting under the poor response to the 2G auction, the government yesterday said it would try to sell spectrum in circles where there were no bidders by the end of this fiscal.
Communications Minister Kapil Sibal said an empowered group of ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram would meet soon to decide on the price and date for the auction in circles such as Delhi and Mumbai.
With Chidambaram and Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari by his side, Sibal addressed a media conference just days ahead of parliament’s winter session and rejected opposition allegations that the government was “celebrating” the auction failure, and claimed that some Rs40,000 crore could still be garnered form the sale of radio waves.
Sibal also sought to shift the blame on the Comptroller and Auditor General for the dismal show and “sensationalism” over the auditor’s presumptive loss figure of Rs.1.76 lakh crore.
“Where are those Rs.1.76 lakh crore?” he asked, adding “government getting revenue cannot be the sole criterion” for policy.
“You cannot extrapolate figures and sensationalise them and destroy the hen that laid the golden egg... Sensationalism took over and government was limited in its policy prescriptions which has resulted in what we saw a few days ago,” said Sibal. Sibal said the government got more than Rs.1 lakh crore from the auction of 3G spectrum, which was used by the CAG to base its presumptive loss. “But the customer got nothing” as there was no roll-out of 3G services.
The government had set a reserve price of Rs14,000 crore for pan-India spectrum on the basis of CAG’s assumption of Rs1.76 lakh crore loss caused to the exchequer in the previous sale in 2008. It managed a meagre Rs9,407.64 crore in the auction that lasted barely two days.
“The telecom story is no longer a story that we can talk about to the rest of the world,” said Sibal. “People ask me the question, what happened? And quite frankly, I have no answers.”
Finance Minister P Chidambram said the auction that ended on Wednesday was not a success or a failure as the process had not been completed yet.
IANS
