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It also rejected Opposition allegations that government was celebrating the failure of the auction and said notwithstanding the poor response, it will garner the estimated Rs 40,000 crore from spectrum sales.
An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram will meet soon to decide on price and date for auction of spectrum in circles like Delhi and Mumbai, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal told a news conference here.
The government, which had set a reserve price of Rs 14,000 crore for pan-India spectrum on the basis of CAG's assumption of Rs 1.76 lakh crore loss caused to the exchequer in the previous sale in 2008, managed a meagre Rs 9,407.64 crore in the auction that lasted barely two days.
"The telecom story is no longer a story that we can talk about to the rest of the world. People ask me the question, what happened? And quite frankly, I have no answers.
"All I can say that certain events took place and there was a level of sensationalism that took over and the government was, in a sense, limited in its policy prescriptions and had to move forward in a certain way which ultimately has resulted in what we have seen couple of days ago," he said.
Sibal said the government got more than Rs 1 lakh crore from the auction of 3G spectrum, which was used by CAG to base its presumptive loss. "But the customer got nothing" as there was no roll-out of 3G services.
"Where are those Rs 1.76 lakh crore?" he asked in an apparent reference to the CAG estimate and the money garnered in the auction that concluded on Wednesday.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram, responding to questions on the net gains made by government, said, "I think you are all jumping to numbers. I thought we started by saying let's stop myth making first. I think you are making or building more myths now."
CAG was speculating rather than auditing accounts.He is far removed from reality.
The four people who commented before me have seen through congress' game plan !!!!! It is not the CAG it is the congress and A Raja who were responsible and the bidders were scared to bid because they would not make much money by palming of the bandwidth to some naive entrepreneur
The problem in biddingg is more to do with the beleaguered reputation of UPA II more than anything else. Now the Sibals' like will use to blow their shameless trumpets in their glory of failure to justify the fiscal scandals in it. Shame to UPA.
The entire auction recently staged by the government is stage-managed and rigged, for which congress is famous for. The only objective of the congress government is to prove CAG wrong and come to power in 2014. Sibal, PC and Manish, you will be booted out, don't worry, your days in government are numbered.
Mr Sibal's tone and timing of the statement indicates that UPA wanted this spectrum sale to fail, thus trying to create doubts in people's mind about CAG. The responsibility for this exercise lies solely with the government. First it wasn't vigilant enough to prevent its ministers from acting like cronies and cause loss to the Exchequer. With rollback of licenses, business lost trust in government's ability to stick to its own policies. I am not sure what Mr Sibal was expecting this sale will yield. No one will be taking risk in a country governed by a coalition that is corrupt and then to save its face constantly changes its stance. But as they always do, blame CAG, opposition and media. Unfortunately that will not work. People get it.
One cannot escape the impression that the entire UPA govt. feels immensely elated at the failure of the 2G auction. One should not be surprised if the entire cabinet makes a beeline to the Balaji temple in Tirupati and have their heads shaved as a mark of gratitude to the Lord for fulfilling their wish. I would strongly recommend to every one to read the excellent editorial in The Hindu of today (16 Nov.) on this matter. That editorial clearly spells out the reasons why the morons in power have nothing to crow about because the 2G auction flop is essentially a self-inflicted wound.The government ministers and spokesmen are aiming their barbs at the soft target of CAG because they have no guts to criticise the Supreme Court. It was the Supreme Court which cancelled the 122 licences awarded by A Raja not for any financial loss to the exchequer but for the fraudulent manner of their allotment and ordered the voided licences be auctioned. and the CAG had nothing to do with this decision.
