President and PM cross connect again

New Delhi, July 17: President K R Narayanan has written to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, urging him to put on hold certain modific...

New Delhi, July 17: President K R Narayanan has written to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, urging him to put on hold certain modifications made to the telecom policy by the Cabinet ten days ago. The President has suggested that these changes be debated after the elections are over and a new government has taken over.

This has once again brought the Presidency in conflict with the Executive on the contentious issue of the powers of a caretaker government. There have been sharp differences between the President and the Prime Minister in recent months on several matters, including the decision of the Government to disinvest and to buy aircraft for the Indian Airlines. Narayanan had also communicated to Vajpayee suggesting the Government summon a session of the Rajya Sabha to discuss Kargil.

Disregarding the President’s view, the Government however is going ahead with the implementation of the controversial part of the telecom policy which allows telecom operators to migrate from the existingfixed-licence fee system to a revenue-sharing one in which their annual outflows will now be a fraction of what they were earlier.

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Highly placed sources in the Government said that since the telecom policy itself was cleared in March 1999, much before the Government fell, there was no irregularity in the Cabinet decision. They argue that the Cabinet decision on how the existing telecom players were to migrate from one licence fee system to the other was only a small part of the new telecom policy — besides, the policy itself had said that such a migration would be done. So all that the Cabinet did was to actually clear the mechanics of this migration.

There is a view in the Government that given the assertiveness of the President on the issue, the Union Cabinet should meet and re-endorse its earlier decision. The President then will have no leg to stand on since he can only send back a policy decision to the Cabinet for reconsideration.

Narayanan’s reservations were evident when he had called formerCommunications Minister Jagmohan to brief him about the Cabinet’s decision and the circumstances in which he was removed to the Urban Affairs ministry. Jagmohan had reportedly been ambivalent.

Sources in the Government say the President has questioned not the right of the Executive to formulate policy but his objection is on the grounds that a caretaker Government should not take decisions which involved large sums of money and bound future governments. He has asked not for a review of the policy but for its deferment till a duly elected government can be in the saddle.

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A salient point of the National Telecom Policy 1999 was about the grant of future licences to telecom operators under a new revenue-sharing scheme. It had also suggested that the existing licensees be moved to the new arrangement. The Cabinet, while clearing it, sought the opinion of the Attorney General on the legal viability of the proposal. Soli Sorbajee had cleared it legally, though his opinion was given much after the governmentfell. On July 7, the Cabinet cleared the mechanism by which the older licensees could also transit to the new scheme, raising an outcry from the Opposition.

It is an irony that soon after it was defeated on the floor of the House, the Cabinet Secretary had put out a set of guidelines saying that a caretaker government could not take policy decisions.