PM cites FM radio auction to reply to critics on corruption

Answering critics over the issue of corruption, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today cited the ongoing auction of private FM radio channels and said Rs 1150 crore had already been mopped up in a transparent process.
"People ask what have you done to curb corruption," he said at a function here to release the digital version of Goswami Tulsidas' epic 'Ramcharitmanas'.
"Earlier FM channels used to contribute Rs 80-100 crore to the government coffers. Now auctions are going on. In auctions there is transparency. And what is the result? Bids of nearly Rs 1150 crore have been made and bidding is still going on," Modi said.

He added that since the bidding is still going on and the kind of rules and regulations that have been put in place, there is a possibility of mopping up Rs 2700-2800 crore.
"This is a shining example of how money can be generated for the development of the country by making systems transparent and using technology to eliminate corruption without adding a new economic burden," Modi said.
The e-auctions for the first batch of channels under FM Phase III expansion is underway and till now 104 rounds of bidding have taken place.

At the close of the 26th day of bidding today, 94 channels in 56 cities became provisional winning channels with cumulative provisional winning price of about Rs 1151.6 crore against their aggregate reserve price of about Rs 459 crore.

The musical version of Ramcharitmanas, which is played on All India Radio every day for the last 35 years, was composed by Samar Bahadur Singh, the then Station Director of AIR, Bhopal.
Born in a village in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, Singh was a self-taught musician. He is the late father of senior IPS officer Y P Singh, who served in Maharashtra police.