The Hindu : Front Page : NDA regime was involved in biggest scam: Raja

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Saturday, Oct 31, 2009
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NDA regime was involved in biggest scam: Raja

Sandeep Joshi

Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Union Minister A. Raja talking to reporters in New Delhi on Friday. —

NEW DELHI: Union Communications and Information Technology Minister A. Raja on Friday countered the BJP’s allegation against him of corruption in spectrum allocation, and charged the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime with causing a Rs.1.6-lakh crore loss to the exchequer by allocating radio waves free to private telecom operators.

Mr. Raja said there was no question of his resigning from the Ministry as whatever he did was in keeping with the guidelines laid down, and duly approved by the Cabinet.

“Allegations that the country has suffered a loss of thousands of crores under my tenure are totally baseless. In fact, what happened under the BJP-led government is the ‘biggest scam ever’ the country has seen.” He said the NDA government gave the scarce spectrum for free to the then operators without approval from the Cabinet or the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. It favoured certain companies by allocating to them more spectrum, causing monopoly of the then players in the market and hampering competition. Almost 230 MHz of spectrum was illegally doled out in this manner under the NDA government.

Mr. Raja alleged that both his predecessors in the NDA government — Pramod Mahajan and Arun Shourie — violated all norms and guidelines to favour private operators and caused a loss of thousands of crores. Mr. Raja said he fought for new players, seeking to end the monopoly of the old players.

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