TRAI panel admits 2G valuation tricky

A three-member expert committee,set up by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and meant to determine the precise value of spectrum during 2001-2008.

A three-member expert committee,set up by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and meant to determine the precise value of spectrum during 2001-2008,has filed a report complaining of a tricky exercise plagued by data deficit.

The report,dated August 19,comes when the valuation of public loss caused by the 2008 spectrum allocation under then Telecom Minister A Raja is pegged anywhere between Rs 1.76 lakh crore by the Comptroller and Auditor General to over Rs 30,000 crore by the CBI and zero loss by Rajas successor Kapil Sibal.

The panel report,by accurately estimating the value of the spectrum,would have arrived at the exact loss. At the outset we need to underscore the importance of adequate and good quality data in an estimation of this nature8230;The task becomes further complicated because it involves going back in time during which there was unexpected and unprecedented growth of the telecom industry, the report said.

Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani,representing Managing Director of Unitech Wireless and accused Sanjay Chandra,argued before the Supreme Court on September 5 that the report says there was no loss of public money in the spectrum allocation. Jethmalanis submissions had made a bench of Justices GS Singhvi and HL Dattu anxious enough to direct the CBI to file a copy of the report before it. The CBI duly filed a copy of the report today.

The report strongly recommends auction of spectrum as the ideal method. The ideal method to determine value of any scarce natural resource including spectrum is by way of the market mechanism,that is,to use the winning bid as an estimate of value, it says.

Though it estimates the value of spectrum in 2008 to be between Rs 5,500 crore and Rs 9,500 crore,it complains that the government not taking the auction route was a stumbling block in its inquiry. A city court too today sought CBIs stand on a plea by all 17 accused in the 2G spectrum case for making the TRAI report a part of the courts records. All the accused,including former telecom minister A. Raja and MP Kanimozhi,moved the court of Special CBI Judge O P Saini seeking direction to the agency to file the TRAI report.