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Business News/ Industry / Telecom/  CAG pulls up telecom department for Rs24,000 cr ‘loss’
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CAG pulls up telecom department for Rs24,000 cr ‘loss’

In a report tabled in Parliament on Friday, CAG highlights various policy and procedural lapses by the telecom department

Photo: Ramesh Pathania/MintPremium
Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

New Delhi: In a scathing indictment of the department of telecommunications (DoT), the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found that various policy and procedural lapses on its part led to telecom operators getting an undue advantage of around 24,000 crore.

The national auditor’s report, tabled in Parliament on Friday, said DoT, by allowing telecom companies to share spectrum, through intra-circle roaming agreements, and without any additional charge, had caused them a benefit of 9,604 crore.

The report highlighted how Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd migrated to a unified licence enabling it to offer voice services, from the Internet service provider permit it had obtained earlier, at a price discovered in 2001. This, the report said, caused a loss of 3,367.29 crore to the exchequer.

Reacting to the CAG report, Reliance Jio Infocomm said: “No favour has ever been given. We have always conducted our business as per the prevailing laws and have abided by the rules and regulations prescribed by DoT and other regulatory authorities. We have acquired all our spectrum at market prices through open and transparent bidding processes, the conditions for which were the same for all bidders."

The CAG report also accused DoT of letting Bharti Airtel Ltd get undue advantage by merging the Tamil Nadu and Chennai circles in 2005. This led to the telecom company’s licence in Chennai getting a seven-year extension, from November 2014 to September 2021, coinciding with the expiry date of the Tamil Nadu circle.

In 2010, DoT held the first auction of spectrum, raising as much as 1.06 trillion from the sale of airwaves in the 2100 megahertz (MHz) and 2300Mhz bands, needed for 3G and 4G services. The CAG report said that despite the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recommendations, DoT did not auction 800MHz spectrum. “This resulted in non-realization of upfront charges amounting to 9,626 crore and undue favour to CDMA licencees," the CAG report said.

Similarly, DoT’s grant of dual-technology licences in October 2007, without implementing Trai’s suggestion to levy an additional spectrum usage charge, caused an undue benefit of 882.06 crore between 2009 and 2014, it said.

The auditor also found that DoT’s Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring Cell, charged with monitoring electromagnetic field radiation levels from telecom towers, had failed to do so in a number of instances.

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Published: 09 May 2015, 12:30 AM IST
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