A lot of debate and ‘political firing’ has been happening across party lines ( within parties as well ! ) about the wrong calculation of the loss due to spectrum auctions to the tune of Rs1.76 lac crore as computed by CAG, and a mere collection of Rs 9,407 crore this time against the expected Rs.40,000.00 crore has been quoted as the reason. This is a totally flawed argument .
On September 24th , 2012 , our telecom minister announced that, in the new telecom policy , there would be ‘One nation- free roaming’ . This implicitly indicated that , it would move to one circle instead of multiple circles ! Taking a cue from the new telecom policy, mobile operators have ‘smart-checked’ the government by not bidding at all for expensive circles like Delhi and Mumbai or remain contended with what they have . As most likely , with this policy of ‘One nation- free roaming’ , all operators would be national players automatically and no need to pay 10’s of thousands of crores ! And this may be the reason for poor collection during these auctions , as the policy environment has changed than what used to be during Raja’s time . You cannot play a game of hockey and apply rules of cricket and decide who wins !
Rajendra Pratap Gupta
A Common Man's View Point (Blog) 