New Delhi: Having made huge income by auctioning 3G Spectrum, the Govt. of India was exposed when a small income was made in a hurry, on a “First come first served” basis, in the earlier 2G Spectrum which was criticised by Vinod Rai, Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAGI) who put the loss in over Rs.1 lakh of crores in value. This created an earthquake in media and administration, and cast a doubt on even the 1G Spectrum, or whole of Telecom Spectrum allocations. Now the CAG is studying the whole sensitive sector and its misdeeds from the beginning to the end, to pin down the ‘loot-mar’ culprits in DMK and UPA presumably.
The pressure of politics is now increasing over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh government (UPA) to keep on explaining the various Telecom graft scandals running into astronomical figures at present. Singh himself is the over seer of these scandals which have escaped his notice or have secured his tentative nod before rolling on. The Union govt is now grappling with the problems created by spectrum scales, and PM is as beleaguered at the Centre as, say, Bookanakere Yeddyurappa (CM) is in Karnataka, to hold on to his high chair and public reputation.
The corrupt chapters of Spectrum auction sales have tarnished UPA incurably. Parliament was paralised, a minister was eased out, officials were jailed, but that has made no difference, like Bofors with Quatrochi in it.
The ISRO is now caught up in a 2006 allocation of mobile internet spectrum without a proper bidding process, costing the exchequer a loss of upto Rs.2 trillion (USD 44.20 billion), which is probed by govt. auditors now.
BSNL is similarly caught up in making huge payments of Rs.80 billion (USD 1.77 billion) in a scandal of appointing franchisees on broadband wireless access in metro cities. These are cases of wasted money pots in UPA deals.