According to the Shivraj Patil panel, a telephone conversation between Pradeep Baijal, former chairman, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and a senior Department of Telecommunications (DoT) top department official paved the way for the first-come first-served policy being exploited by successive regimes since 2003, according to news reports.
The Patil panel, set up to probe the 2G spectrum scam, found a deviation in the 2003 Cabinet decision to implement TRAI?s recommendation for entry fees for additional players. Also, the panel said that in deviation with said requirements, the DoT secretary, in 2003, approved the formulation of procedures of accepting applications for grant of universal access licences by adopting a procedure similar to one adopted for the grant of basic service licence.
It is believed that that Baijal is emerging as a common figure in irregularities spanning NDA and UPA terms. It is his backing for migration of new players to unified licences in November 2003 that buried the auctions till they were revived for 3G spectrum. In a letter to the government, Baijal wrote to then telecom secretary Vinod Vaish stating his opinion that the entry fee of the new licences would be the entry fee of the fourth cellular operator and in service areas where there is no fourth operator, the entry fee of the basic service operator fixed by the government (based on TRAI recommendations).
The panel also said the then telecom minister approved the formulation of procedure for grant of UASL on the basis of first-come first-served as against through the multi-stage bidding process. The Patil committee says this was clear deviation from existing policy.
Also, Baijal allegedly gave his opinion as TRAI chairman without consulting other members on the regulatory panel. In dealing with paragraphs 7.18 to 7.20 of the regulators recommendation on the “3rd alternative (of) existing entry fee of the fourth cellular operator” being the benchmark, he seems to have glossed over a subsequent part of the same report.
In paragraph 7.39, TRAI pitches for a “multi-stage bidding process”. It states the government “may introduce additional players through a multi-stage bidding process as was followed for the 4th cellular operator”. Once this advice was ignored on the basis of Baijal’s reading, it led to the auction route being repeatedly ignored for more opaque methods.
