Jailed former Telecom Minister A Raja on Wednesday told a Delhi court that he would get Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister P Chidambaram and the current Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal summoned as witnesses to prove that the government did not incur any loss in the 2G allocation.
Maintaining the zero-loss claim, therefore, involves justifying the failure to do proper price discovery, as through the spectrum auction in 2010 for 3G services.
The Ministry of Home Affairs in the past has raised concerns on increasing FDI in telecom sector.
On day when A Raja, jailed former minister of telecommunications, accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former finance minister P Chidambaram in a lower court while trying to drag them 'legally' in the 2G spectrum scam, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal also picked up none else but Raja's lawyer's argument.
Official data released on Friday showed the economy grew by 5.5 per cent in the first quarter of the current fiscal as against 8 per cent during the same period of previous fiscal.
The Finance Ministry, which is under immense pressure to meet the fiscal deficit target during the current financial year, has also written a letter to the department of telecommunication to auction spectrum to earn additional revenues.
The ISPs had already made a presentation to telecom minister Kapil Sibal to request his help in such a process if the government did not want to continue with the current ISP regime.
Says tradability will ensure greater economic efficiency & higher revenues for the government.
Rationalisation of reserve prices in the ongoing spectrum auction helped the government to get Rs 40,000 crore of bids on the opening day.
Spectrum auction on Thursday entered the 10th day of bidding and started off from Rs 61,091.83 crore (Rs 610.91 billion) in terms of value.
Telecom regulator Trai on Monday announced reduction in the national mobile phone roaming charges, but said there will be no free national roaming as of now.
The CBI and the ED said that new material has been recovered which needs to be collated.
After a two year run-in with controversies, telecom sector now looks stable and seems back on its feet with initial investment proposal of over Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion) received in 2013.
Its says reconsider lower reserve price, uniform usage charges; GSM players to bear the brunt.
Sibal said the party will certainly move the court if amendments in the Aadhaar Act to be brought after this verdict are not brought in Rajya Sabha for discussion.
