Former Finance Secretary and incumbent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Dr D. Subbarao, on Thursday appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) with regard to the 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Dr Subbarao was heard by the PAC on Thursday to understand the role that the Finance Ministry played and also to get more information on the deliberations that the Finance Ministry had with the Department of Telecom (DoT) at that time (in 2008), Mr Murli Manohar Joshi, Chairman of the PAC told reporters at Parliament .

Dr Subbarao was the Finance Secretary when the 2G spectrum allocation was made in 2008.

According to the CAG report, Finance Ministry was not in favour of first-come-first-served approach and wanted a market-based pricing mechanism for 2G spectrum allocation.

Mr Joshi, however, declined to go into the specifics of what Dr Subbarao had to say to the PAC here today.

“You will eventually get to know when the report is submitted by the PAC,” Mr Joshi said.

PAC had also earlier called the erstwhile Finance Secretary, Mr Ashok Chawla, to get his views on the CAG report and 2G spectrum allocation issues. Mr Chawla had demitted office as Finance Secretary on January 31 this year.

No interim report

The PAC Chairman also made it clear that the PAC was not looking to submit any interim report on the CAG's report on 2G spectrum allocation tabled in Parliament few months back.

Mr Joshi also said that PAC had received the responses of DoT to the letters sent by the telecom companies regarding the CAG report.

The representations of the telecom companies were sent to CAG, who had forwarded them to the PAC. The PAC had then sent the company representations to the DoT for the latter's view.

> krsrivats@thehindu.co.in

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