With less than a week to go before the winter session of parliament begins, UPA managers are out to fortify their position. Holding a combined press conference on Thursday, a day after the Opposition made its intentions of going aggressive clear, finance minister P Chidambaram, telecom minister Kapil Sibal and I&B minister Manish Tewari did not miss the opportunity to blame all and sundry for the government’s policy paralysis. While telecom minister Sibal attributed ‘sensationalism’ over the presumptive loss figures of Rs 1.76 lakh crore given by the CAG as a major factor in contributing towards ‘killing the telecom sector’, his senior colleagaue Chidambaram said, ‘The point is that, this auction has discovered a price.’ The government, which had set a reserve price of Rs 14,000 crore for pan-India spectrum on the basis of CAG’s assumption of Rs 1.76 lakh crore loss caused to the exchequer in the previous sale in 2008, managed a meagre Rs 9,407.64 crore in the auction that lasted barely two days.
The duo rejected Opposition allegations that government was celebrating the failure of the auction and said notwithstanding the poor response, it will garner the estimated Rs 40,000 crore from spectrum sales. Chidambaram said, ‘I underscore Sibal’s statement that policy must be left to the government of the day, which can take the economic condition into consideration. We are neither celebrating, nor condemning anyone. We are simply pointing out what happened over the last four years.’’ Earlier, Sibal had said, ‘All I can say that certain events took place and there was a level of sensationalism that took over and the government was, in a sense, limited in its policy prescriptions and had to move forward in a certain way which ultimately has resulted in what we have seen couple of days ago.’ In an apparent reference to the CAG estimate and the money garnered in the auction, Sibal asked ‘Where are those Rs 1.76 lakh crore?’
Supplementing Sibal’s charge, Chidambaram said, ‘In the popular imagination the 2G scam involved in Rs 1.76 lakh crore. That scam, it is now clear, was pure myth. That’s the point he (Sibal) is trying to say.’ An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by P Chidambaram will now meet to decide on price and date for auction of spectrum in circles like Delhi and Mumbai, Sibal said.
The duo rejected Opposition allegations that government was celebrating the failure of the auction and said notwithstanding the poor response, it will garner the estimated Rs 40,000 crore from spectrum sales. Chidambaram said, ‘I underscore Sibal’s statement that policy must be left to the government of the day, which can take the economic condition into consideration. We are neither celebrating, nor condemning anyone. We are simply pointing out what happened over the last four years.’’ Earlier, Sibal had said, ‘All I can say that certain events took place and there was a level of sensationalism that took over and the government was, in a sense, limited in its policy prescriptions and had to move forward in a certain way which ultimately has resulted in what we have seen couple of days ago.’ In an apparent reference to the CAG estimate and the money garnered in the auction, Sibal asked ‘Where are those Rs 1.76 lakh crore?’
Supplementing Sibal’s charge, Chidambaram said, ‘In the popular imagination the 2G scam involved in Rs 1.76 lakh crore. That scam, it is now clear, was pure myth. That’s the point he (Sibal) is trying to say.’ An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by P Chidambaram will now meet to decide on price and date for auction of spectrum in circles like Delhi and Mumbai, Sibal said.