New Delhi:
The Joint Parliamentary Committee's (JPC) on the 2G spectrum scam meets today and tomorrow, for the first time after the draft Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the issue was submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker by PAC chief Murli Manohar Joshi.
Experts from Ministry of Communication and the Income Tax department will help the JPC go back "at least 10 years on Telecom policy," to thrash out the issue, said one of the 30-member committee on the eve of the meeting.
Today afternoon, experts from the Minitry of Communication would be briefing the committee on the subject of allocation and pricing of telecom licenses and spectrum during the period of 1998 to 2009.
Tomorrow representatives of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) would be briefing the committee followed by the representative of the Ministry of Finance (Revenue and Economic Affairs).
The list of people to appear before the committee includes Telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar and TRAI chairman J Sarma.
"The process and procedures as well as the criteria for awarding licences since 1998 will be gone into," said a well placed source. The committee, sources say wants to complete a substantial part of the work till August and will be summoning people through the summer, including previous telecom ministers, and even A Raja, now in jail for his alleged involvement in the scam. "We will call whoever is required for the probe," said a source.
The JPC may also consider setting up a technical committee to quantify the loss that has been caused by the 2G spectrum allocation. This is necessitated by the fact that various agencies like Comptroller Auditor General (CAG), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Central Vigilance Committee (CVC) and the Parliament's PAC have given different estimates ranging from Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 1.90 lakh crore.
The draft PAC report on the scam had in fact asked the government to arrive at a firm figure for the loss. Sources said that while the draft PAC report was more or less public now, "our work will go beyond that of the PAC, as we will investigate telecom policy stretching back to 1998."
Experts from Ministry of Communication and the Income Tax department will help the JPC go back "at least 10 years on Telecom policy," to thrash out the issue, said one of the 30-member committee on the eve of the meeting.
Today afternoon, experts from the Minitry of Communication would be briefing the committee on the subject of allocation and pricing of telecom licenses and spectrum during the period of 1998 to 2009.
Tomorrow representatives of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) would be briefing the committee followed by the representative of the Ministry of Finance (Revenue and Economic Affairs).
The list of people to appear before the committee includes Telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar and TRAI chairman J Sarma.
"The process and procedures as well as the criteria for awarding licences since 1998 will be gone into," said a well placed source. The committee, sources say wants to complete a substantial part of the work till August and will be summoning people through the summer, including previous telecom ministers, and even A Raja, now in jail for his alleged involvement in the scam. "We will call whoever is required for the probe," said a source.
The JPC may also consider setting up a technical committee to quantify the loss that has been caused by the 2G spectrum allocation. This is necessitated by the fact that various agencies like Comptroller Auditor General (CAG), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Central Vigilance Committee (CVC) and the Parliament's PAC have given different estimates ranging from Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 1.90 lakh crore.
The draft PAC report on the scam had in fact asked the government to arrive at a firm figure for the loss. Sources said that while the draft PAC report was more or less public now, "our work will go beyond that of the PAC, as we will investigate telecom policy stretching back to 1998."
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