DoT judges itself

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee no longer needs to judge the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) performance when it comes to the auction of 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum — the DoT has laid out its own parameters for this. While the DoT is reported to have said that it cannot conduct the auctions before the end of the financial year, the Results Framework Document (RFD) created by the ministry — it is an MoU that has to be signed by the secretary of the ministry and the minister — tells a different story. According to the RFD, a weight of 30 per cent has been given to “efficient management of the spectrum” and this, in turn, is defined as “auction of spectrum for 3G and BWA services” — this has the highest weight among all the activities of the DoT. The RFD says that if the auction is completed by March 20, the DoT will have done an “excellent” job; “very good” if the auction is done by March 31; “good” if the auction is done by April 30; “fair” if done by May 31 and “poor” if this is done by June 30. The RFD was put up on the DoT website a few days ago.