The Shivraj Patil Committee report has said that Pradip Baijal, former chairman, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Vinod Vaish, the then Department of Telecommunications (DoT) secretary violated policy and awarded licences to Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) in 2004 without auctions, according to news reports.
The report added that Baijal and Vaish ignored Cabinet-approved TRAI decisions and issued fresh Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) guidelines.
TRAI, under Baijal?s leadership, released its recommendations mentioning adoption of a multi-stage bidding process for grant of new UASL licences in section 7.39 of its report on October 27, 2003. The Cabinet approved this on October 31, 2003, which resulted in the framing of UASL guidelines on November 11 that year.
On November 14 the same year, Baijal wrote to Vinod Vaish reversing his own recommendations to clarify that the entry fee for new unified licence would be the entry fee for the fourth cellular operator. Subsequently, on October 17, Vaish approved the decision to accept applications made for grant of UASL licences.
The report highlights that Baijal wrote a letter contradicting his own recommendations which had Cabinet approval. Also, the report states that Vaish formulated a procedure based on this letter without presenting the same to either the Telecom Commission or in the public domain in a transparent manner.
Naming the beneficiaries of this chain of events, the report says, ?Without there being any notified procedure to be followed for the grant of UASL and without application having been invited from all, the procedure thus formulated was applied to facilitate consideration of applications made by TTSL in the forms prescribed for grant of basic service licences.?
The report concludes that Baijal?s letter to Vaish was interpreted to infer conclusions on the entry fee payable for fresh UASL licences contrary to and inconsistent with TRAI?s recommendations.
During this period, TTSL received 12 new UASL licenses, seven for which they applied for on November 12, 2003 and one on November 14, before Baijal?s letter, and four applications on November 29. They were the first to be granted new UASL licenses without auctions in 2004.
