Comments
The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on spectrum allocation was taken by surprise here on Thursday when former Cabinet Secretary K. M. Chandrasekhar told the panel that he had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2007 that the Government can raise Rs 35,000 crore by charging entry fee on the 2G licence applicants.
His note, written in December 2007, was not made available to the panel and its Chairman, P. C. Chacko, has directed the officials to make it available to the members at the earliest.
Chandrasekhar told the panel that the Prime Minister asked him to submit a note on the financial implications on the Government with regard to the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on 2G spectrum allocation. He, however, said the Prime Minister was consulting others too on the issue and it was up to the Telecom Ministry to take a final view on the issue.
The Government raised Rs 1,651 crore per licence through entry fee of the 2G spectrum players, while the total revenue generated through the licence sale on a first-come-first-serve basis was about Rs 10,000 crore. Sources said the CPI (M) member in the panel, Sitaram Yechury, asked Chandrasekhar about various suggestions on increasing the entry fee. Chandrasekhar said he himself had asked the Prime Minister to increase the entry fee.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.