Was a mistake to fix high reserve price for 2G auction: Montek

Ahluwalia, who was part of an Empowered Group of Ministers that set Rs 14,000 crore as the base price, said the government which plans to have another auction soon for the unsold spectrum, needs to take a relook at the price.

"I myself had raised the issue that it was a mistake to pitch the reserve price at a level close to that..." he told reporters here. "I think in the hindsight it was clear that the reserve price was too high".

The government, which had set a reserve price of Rs 14,000 crore for pan-India spectrum broadly drawing from the basis used by CAG in calculating the loss in the previous sale in 2008, managed a meagre Rs 9,407.64 crore in the auction that lasted barely two days.

"But that doesn't matter, we are going to re-auction and you will discover the price," he told reporters on the sidelines of Indo-Japan symposium here.

Ahluwalia said several discussions were held to set the reserve price for auctioning the spectrum and the EGoM had "actually lowered the reserve price" from Rs 18,000 crore suggested by sector regulator TRAI to Rs 14,000 crore.

"I want to mention here that one or two newspapers criticised that as if by lowering the reserve price we are going to reduce the outcome. I had argued very strongly that a healthy auction process will discover the prices whether you fix it at one or two or seven hundred," he said.