I Followed Established Procedure in Allotment of Spectrum: Raja

A few days after a CBI raid on Telecom Department offices, Union Telecom Minister A Raja has said that he pursued the same procedures as were followed by his predecessors in awarding licence and allotting spectrum and that decisions were taken in conformity with the opinion of the top law officer.

“I have been saying that issuance of licence and allotment of spectrum have been done in accordance with telecom regulator TRAI’s recommendations, in consultation with the Prime Minister after clear approval of the Solicitor General of India who was appearing before the tribunal with connected cases,” he told reporters.

He said that no question of any ambiguity or aberration of rules arises and the well established procedure of ‘first come first serve’ that was adopted in the 1999 Telecom Policy brought out by the then BJP-led government was followed.

:All my predecessors followed the same procedure so did I. So, in terms of legal rules and procedure followed, there is no deviation,” he said.

In response to the query if he was a victim of a telecom cartel, he said: “It was earlier believed that there should not be more operators so there was an implied stagnation or some sort of cartel… I wanted to bring competition in accordance with (regulator) Trai norms… So the competition might have created some storm… Let it be investigated.”

Needless to add, Raja is facing a charge that he allotted spectrum cheaply to new players that might have incurred great loss to the exchequer and the CBI is probing the matter, which also conducted a rain on Telecom offices.

On the oppositio’s demand for his resignation in view of an ongoing investigation involving his ministry Raja said, “Where is the question of resignation… That question does not arise.”

Any procedural error by DoT officials, he said, will be in front of the investigating agency. “I should not comment or interfere in course of investigation,” he added.