Give weightage to TRAI recommendations: JPC

The draft JPC report on 2G scam, which has triggered a political storm, has said that TRAI recommendations need to be accorded due weightage by the government and its expertise needed to be utilised.
The draft report, circulated to members on Friday evening, said while telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is bound to respond to queries in a time-bound manner, "government is at liberty to accept, reject or keep it pending without citing any tangible reason.
"On a close look at the provisions contained in Section 11(i) of the amended TRAI Act, the Committee find that these provisos specify time restrictions mostly on TRAI for executing its tasks pursuant to references received from the government.

"However, once TRAI forwards its recommendations, the government is at liberty to accept, reject or keep it pending without citing any tangible reason. Moreover, there have been instances in the past where the recommendations of TRAI were cold shouldered by the government."
It said two specific instances are the recommendations on 'Spectrum Related Issues' of May 13, 2005 and the recommendations on 'Unified Licensing Regime' of January 13, 2005.