Sinha vows to complete spectrum auctioning by Sept

The minister, who took charge earlier this week, said: “We expect the spectrum auction to be finalised in September.” 

The Cabinet had approved the spectrum auction plan last month.The government expects to raise at least Rs  64,000 crore by auctioning about 2,300 Mhz of spectrum and Rs 98,995 crore from various levies and services in the telecom sector.

On call drops, where the industry and the government have been at the loggerheads, Sinha assured that he expects “qualitative progress” on the issue in coming 5-6 months.

“The Department of Telecom will work on the framework for providing relief from call drops in the long term,” he said, adding that the issue would be discussed in the next 15-20 days.

Asked about the Congress’ allegations of a telecom scam, he said, “Whatever happened in the past has nothing to do with this government.”

“Since the time the NDA government has come to power, there has been no such complaint. The process of recovering money from telecom operators will be completed in definite time,” he said, adding that parties are raising the issue just to support ‘some’ telecom service providers.

Hitting back at the Congress, the government on Friday said the alleged ‘telecom scam’ was the UPA regime’s “sin” that the present dispensation has to clean and it will do “every bit to recover every single penny”. 

“Who was running the government between 2006 and 2010, everyone know that... Scam is of their government. It is their sin, we will do the work of cleaning it. We will do every bit to recover every single penny,” Sinha said.