Let DoT policy continue,Pranab wrote to PM

In fact,on December 26,2007,just two weeks before the Department of Telecom (DoT) issued 122 letters of intent (LoI) for allotment of spectrum,Mukherjee sent a “top secret” letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The same day,Raja wrote a letter to the PM saying he had met Mukherjee several times and that Mukherjee had “further enlightened me to take a pre-emptive and pro-active decision on these issues to avoid any further confusions and delay”.

In his letter to Singh,Mukherjee — whose views had been sought by the PM on “telecom licences and spectrum issues” — says that since the allocation of licences and spectrum was being done under the December 14,2005 guidelines for Unified Access Services Licence and because “it is assumed that the ‘Policy’ which is being referred to in a number of cases before the TDSAT is what is stated in these guidelines”,the DoT “may continue to follow this policy this any further changes are made in this regard”.

Sources said a Group of Ministers headed by Mukherjee had been set up to examine spectrum pricing but spectrum pricing had been kept out of the GoM’s purview with the consent of the Prime Minister. Also,the DoT repeatedly ignored the MoF advice to raise entry fees.

While the Prime Minister’s letter that he wrote to Raja on November 2,2007 suggested that Raja should look at the possibility of auctioning the licences,Mukherjee’s letter backs Raja’s first-come-first-served policy.

It talks about the new,and higher,norms for the subscriber-linked criterion spectrum,but does not address the issue of there being 575 applicants for 122 licences. Mukherjee’s letter says,“While under the existing policy,the government may keep on issuing new licences,the criteria for the grant of licences may be strengthened and put in the public domain at the earliest”.

On the issue of dual-technology licences,Mukherjee suggested the licence fee the firms paid “may be termed as ‘Crossover fee’ to distinguish it from licence fee”.

Mukherjee’s letter is silent on the issues raised by the then TRAI chief Nripendra Misra,who had recommended that,since they were benefiting in a big way,dual-technology firms should pay a much higher annual spectrum charge. It also doesn’t address other changes made by Raja to TRAI’s recommendations which Misra had gone public with. While Misra had recommended that no licencees be allowed to do mergers and acquisitions operations till they rolled out their networks,Raja gave this the go by — this is what allowed Swan and Unitech Wireless to bring in new investors.