Fate of cancelled licences to lie with Investigative agencies: Manoj Sinha

New Delhi: Telecom minister Manoj Sinha said on Thursday that fate of the 122 telecom licences of eight operators that were cancelled in 2012 will be decided based on the investigative agencies’ take on acquittal of all the accused in the 2G spectrum case. However, since CBI is going to appeal the acquittal in higher courts, these telecom firms are unlikely to get any relief from the government including compensation, said sources. The companies whose licences were cancelled by Supreme Court included Telenor (Uninor), Sistema, Videocon, Etisalat, S-Tel and Loop among others.

Mr Sinha asserted that the process used by the previous UPA regime to allocate spectrum was “faulty” and “dipped” in “corruption”. He said that scarce natural resources is the best allocated through auction and not the policy of 'first-come-first-serve' followed by the UPA regime by basing the spectrum on 2001 prices. He said that Rs 1.09 lakh crore was raised from spectrum auction in 2015, and Rs 65,789 crore in 2016.

Under the UPA regime, this amount stood at Rs 9,407 crore in 2012, Rs 3,539 crore in 2013 and Rs 61,162 crore in 2014. “One thing is clear that the 2G spectrum allotment process was faulty and dipped in corruption,” he said. The minister said Supreme Court in 2012 quashed all the 122 licences given under the then telecom minister A. Raja as it had held that the procedure followed by the UPA regime was wrong.