Thiru A Raja,46 Minister of Communications and Information Technology

A. Raja of the DMK took over as Communications and IT minister in the middle of 2007 after his party colleague Dayanidhi Maran fell out with party chief M. Karunanidhi. He took a number of controversial decisions in the most brazen manner in a sector said to be the one of the best performing since liberalisation.

His brief

The CMP and the Congress manifesto listed employment generation as its vision for the sector.

Reforms derailed

• One of the prominent features of Rajas tenure was discussions on implementing seamless Internet telephony. Despite a go-ahead from the regulator,the ministry continues to dilly-dally with the idea.

• He pushed through an ad-hoc administrative fiat to the national telecom policy,1999,which allowed unlimited operators in a circle. Raja first encouraged a lot of new firms with no prior experience in telecom to apply for new licences. When applications started pouring in,he arbitrarily set the last date for applications as October 1,2007. Later he awarded new licences to nine operators. The fate of the remaining hangs in balance.

• He allowed usage of dual technologymeaning companies could provide GSM as well as CDMA technology using the same licence. The manner in which the entire exercise was conducted was termed as non-transparent. However,recently,the telecom tribunal upheld the dual technology policy.

• Towards the end of his tenure,Raja got mired in a Rs 60,000 crore worth scam when he bypassed TRAIs recommendations on awarding auctioning licence to new players.

• Mobile Number Portability,which allows consumers to change the service provider without changing the phone number,got stuck.

Opportunities blown

• Raja’s biggest miss would be his inability to hold the 3G spectrum auctions. Mobile users continue to be denied access to one of the biggest advances in mobile technology,since the government was unable to frame the guidelines for the auction. In the backdrop of the current economic crisis,it also means that the government can probably never get the whopping Rs 40,000 crore it would have earned had it conducted the auction.

• He turned BSNL,a company with a robust net profit of Rs 10,000 crore,into a loss-making unit.

What was he thinking?

On bypassing TRAIs recommendation on auctioning licences to new playerswhich cost the exchequer Rs 60,000 croreRaja said: I was trying to break the invisible cartel of telecom operators in the country by allotting the telecom licences to them at throwaway prices.

Low Point

Despite Raja claiming that the PM and the FM had given him a clean chit on the alleged scam,neither of them publicly supported his claims.

View of the shadow

He used to be very innocent when he was working with us… But you have seen absolutely scandalous proceedings that took place in the auctioning of 2G licences. Arun Shourie on February 25,2009,in the Rajya Sabha Interim Budget debate.

Did he get your vote?

He won from the Nilgiris (Reserved) constituency,Tamil Nadu,with a margin of 86,021 votes.