EGoM meet to fix spectrum price put off

The much anticipated meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on telecom headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, which was to decide on the contentious 2G spectrum auction price, was on Thursday postponed indefinitely.

A top DoT (department of telecommunications) official confirmed the development and said no fresh date had been fixed.

Government officials did not give any clear answers as to why the meeting was put off without any fresh dates. The meeting was first slated for 5.30 pm and then pushed to 8.30 pm before being postponed.

Just five days ago, the finance minister's office had written to Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth, asking if it would be appropriate for Mukherjee to chair EGoMs in the wake of his presidential candidature. Officials said Seth communicated Mukherjee could do so till he filed his nomination papers for the presidential election.

The urgency to convene the EGoM was also reflected in a letter written by DoT Secretary R Chandrashekhar on the same day to Seth, saying it needed to be convened urgently to meet a Supreme Court deadline.

The court has set an August 31 deadline to complete the auction.

The EGoM was to take several key decisions, some of which could be controversial considering the hectic lobbying by GSM operators on the high base price recommended by sector regulator Trai at Rs 3,622 crore per MHz (Mega Hertz) of 2G spectrum.

Telecom operators have said such a move would lead to a huge increase in tariffs, ranging 26-90 paise a minute for consumers and kill the industry. The Trai had said the impact would not be more than 4-6 paise a minute.

A panel set up by the DoT not only endorsed the regulator’s view but suggested the base price be fixed even higher at Rs 4,265 crore per MHz.

The Telecom Commission, which deliberated twice on the regulator’s recommendation, passed on the contentious issue to the EGoM. The commission had asked the regulator to relook at the impact of the base price on operators’ tariffs circle-wise. The report was to be discussed in the EGoM on Thursday.

The EGoM was also scheduled to take decisions on some other key issues, such as whether to allow mortgaging of spectrum, the roll-out obligations on 2G players, whether to implement a deferred payment scheme to ease the financial burden on operators paying for 2G spectrum and the imposition of three per cent spectrum usage charges.

Mukherjee heads around 25 EGoMs and GoMs. He attended a meeting of the EGoM on food-grain management, which he heads, on June 19. The meeting was to decide on providing additional food grain to poor families — a relatively uncontroversial matter.