New Delhi:
The allocation of 2G spectrum turns into a bigger disaster everyday.
In the last few days, the 2G controversy has cost A Raja his job as Telecom Minister; the Supreme Court has criticized the Prime Minister for "alleged inaction and silence" on the issue; and now, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has said that five new companies, who were given 2G licenses by Raja, should be forced to surrender 69 licenses between the for failing to deliver their end of the bargain.
The Telecom Ministry, currently headed by Kapil Sibal, is not obliged to follow TRAI's recommendations. But they turn the dial up by several degrees for a government that's already sweating it out in parliament, where the Opposition wants the Prime Minister to explain the 2G scandal, as well as set up a joint parliamentary committee that will allow the opposition to participate in an inquiry.
According to TRAI, the companies have not met even the most basic requirements - they haven't rolled out their phone services according to the timeline decided in their contracts.
The terms of those contracts are at the heart of the current telecom storm. A report by the government's auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has declared that Raja broke the rules and ignored the advice of the Prime Minister to award licenses at inexplicably cheap prices to companies who should have been declared ineligible. 85 of the 122 licenses issued in 2008 by Raja, the CAG report said, were given to companies who provided false or incorrect information. Some of these companies went on to sell their licenses at massive profits. Raja cost the government 1.76 lakh crores, says the CAG report.
Of the 69 licenses that TRAI wants cancelled, more than half did not meet any part of their rollout obligation for their circles. The others have delivered only some of the services they were meant to.