Prasad blasts Cong on scam allegation

Prasad said the absurd charges came as the process was on for sending notices to telecom companies to recover legitimate due

The Congress party’s charge of a new telecom scam is bogus and motivated, said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister in charge till Tuesday.

Prasad, who retained charge of information technology and was given law in place of telecom in a reshuffle of portfolios, said the absurd charges came as the process was on for sending notices to telecom companies to recover legitimate dues.

The same Congress party, he recalled, now quoting a report of the Union comptroller and auditor general (CAG), had decried the latter's famous report in this regard on the spectrum allocation scam during its rule.

The CAG had now said, explained Prasad, that telecom operators had under-reported revenue by a combined Rs 46,000 crore. Of this, the government would get Rs 5,300 crore as licence fee and spectrum usage charges, and Rs 7,300 crore in interest.

“Demand notices will be issued soon. Our government is not in the business of defending anyone. Whatever is legitimate due shall be recovered according to law,” he said. On the allegation that the government, instead of acting with urgency on the CAG report, chose to go for a revaluation, Prasad said this was mistaken; the telecom department had asked CAG for the relevant documents, to enable follow-up action, "so that on that basis, we can issue notices”.

That same telecom department, during Congress rule, he said, had been the scene of one of the biggest scandals of recent times, with the the prime minister unable to do anything, despite pleas to intervene. “Congress tried to suppress that scam... I was also a member of the JPC (joint committee of Parliament, which probed it),” he said.

“I am very proud that in the same Sanchar Bhawan where so much corruption took place, all things are now happening in a transparent manner and my successor, Manoj Sinha, will carry forward the same legacy,” he added.

The CAG report came only in March and it had supplied the documents on the accounts of telecom companies to the department only on June 15, Prasad said.