BJP today reacted strongly to Telecom Minister A Rajas statement that there was no question of his resignation over the Spectrum allocation controversy,saying as long as the DMK leader continued in office,the government could not free itself from the taint of corruption. BJP alleged that the CBI,which is investigating the case,had committed a lapse by under-calculating the amount of corruption involved in the 2-G spectrum allocation. If he (A Raja) continues in office,the government could not free itself from the taint of corruption, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said in reply to a question. Jaitley refuted Rajas argument that he had followed telecom regulator TRAI guidelines in the allocation of 2-G Spectrum. TRAI had said that the entry fee determined in 2001 is not the realistic price for obtaining the license. Perhaps,it needs to be re-assessed through market mechanism, he said. BJP alleged that the CBI had calculated the 2-G Spectrum deal on the basis of the foreign equity component while ignoring the domestic equity. Some of the companies which bagged the Spectrum contract sold upto 60 per cent of the equity to foreign companies at 2007 market prices. CBI has calculated only the share of foreign partners and put the amount of corruption in the scam at Rs 22,000 crore,the party claimed. The CBI has stated in its FIR how the company which got the contract sold off some shares to a foreign company. These licenses were issued at a very nominal rate based on prices fixed in the year 2001. The quantum of loss to the Government because of this criminal conspiracy is estimated from the fact that M/s Swan was allotted UAS (unified access service) licences for 13 circles for Rs 1,537 crore. It off-loaded 45 per cent of its share to M/s Etilsalat of UAE for Rs 4,200 Crore, the FIR states. BJP sources claimed the loss thus estimated by CBI - as per the FIR - is only on the share sold to the foreign investor while the market price of the Indian company which bagged the contract has not been estimated. BJP has alleged that the scam involves a corruption to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore while CBI puts it at Rs 22,000 crore. CBI has also claimed that certain officials of the Department of Telecommunications entered into a criminal conspiracy with certain private persons/companies and misused their official position in grant of UAS licences causing wrongful loss to the government. CBI has further alleged that undue favour was shown to some by arbitrarily rejecting all applications received between September 25,2007 to October 1,2007. It further added that using the first-come-first-serve basis was also wrong as some applicants had prior information of the scheme.
