CAG to explain its 2G loss estimate

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) will on Monday brief the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) over the Rs 1.76 lakh crore loss estimate that it had reached after scanning accounts of the controversial 2008 spectrum allocation process.

Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai was expected to the explain to the Congress leader P C Chacko-led committee how the huge loss estimate, questioned by many and rejected by the current telecoms minister, was reached.

In its report, which had exploded the 2G scam up on India last year, the government?s auditor had claimed that masterminded by former telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja, the ?illogical? sale of spectrum in 2008, at seven-year-old prices, had lost the Indian exchequer Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

Dubbed the biggest corruption scandal in independent India, the swindle saw top political and corporate heavyweights being accused of paying or receiving kickbacks, and several of them currently languish in the infamous Tihar Jail along with Raja.

The JPC, which was formed after the opposition gridlocked the parliament for almost the entire winter session, is conducting one of the probes into the scam and met on May 18 for the first time after Parliament?s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) submitted its report on the issue.

The PAC report, however, was rejected by its own members who accused the committee?s chief Murli Manohar Joshi of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of framing the report ?unilaterally and undemocratically? with the aim of destabilising the government.

In Monday?s meeting the the CAG report was expected to be discussed by the JPC. The CAG had accused the former telecoms ministry of bending its own rules, which were questionable in the first place, to distribute mobile airwaves and licenses to undeserving firms.

After the JPC?s last meeting on May 18, Chacko had said, ?Today the talk is of a Rs. 1.76 lakh scam. We want to know from the horse’s mouth how he had arrived at the figure.?

While the present telecoms minister Kapil Sibal had trashed the CAG?s astronomical estimate calling it ?utterly erroneous and without any basis?, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also pegged a distinctly smaller loss figure of Rs 30,984 crore.

After Monday?s meeting, the JPC will reportedly call in the CBI Director A P Singh to hear the federal agency?s brief on June 7 and later examine presentations by the Finance Secretary, chief of Enforcement Directorate, and Telecom Regulatory Authority Chairman J S Sarma.