Congress alleges Rs 45,000 crore telecom scam

The Congress on Thursday alleged a Rs 45,000-crore telecom scam and that the Modi government was “surreptitiously taking steps” to protect the interests of six leading telecom companies which owe money to the public exchequer.

The main Opposition raised the issue ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, making it clear that non-NDA parties cannot remain silent on it.

“The latest is a staggering telecom scam of approximately Rs 45,000 crore plus that is being buried under the carpet by Modi sarkar,” party’s chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala alleged at a joint press conference with party spokespersons Shaktisinh Gohil and R.P.N. Singh.

He alleged that the government is “surreptitiously taking steps to protect the interests of six leading telecom companies by helping them avoid the payment of charges rightfully owed to the government”.

He claimed that this is a clear-cut case of loss to the public exchequer verified by the CAG “with the sole aim of helping friendly crony capitalists”. The telecom companies named by Mr Surjewala are Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea, Tata and Aircel.

Replying to a question whether Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was this week shifted to the law and justice ministry from telecom was involved, Mr Surjewala claimed that what has happened in the matter cannot take place “without the direct or indirect concurrence” of the Prime Minister and it would be “improper” to blame any one minister.

The Congress leaders said that the CAG initiated an audit of the six telecom companies for four years from 2006-07 to 2009-10 at the instructions of the Congress-led UPA government. It specifically looked at under-reporting of income and non-uniform method of accounting adopted by various telecom companies and consequent lack of obligation to pay outstanding licence fee and spectrum usage charges.

In its report submitted in 2016, the CAG found an alleged understatement/ under-reporting of income by the six companies of Rs 46,045.75 crore in the four years. “Resultantly, the CAG found that there was an amount of Rs 12,488.93 crore, which remains un-recovered by the government. This does not include penalty, if any, and other relevant taxes,” Mr Surjewala said.

He said that although there has been considerable increase in business, consumer base and income, even if loss of exchequer is calculated on the same formula for the years 2010-11 to 2015-16, this figure would be Rs 45,000 crore plus.

Meanwhile, the telecom department has said that it will soon issue a demand notice of over Rs 12,500 crore to the six telecom operators.

“The report was tabled in March and the documents on the basis of which CAG prepared the report were received by the telecom department recently in June. The telecom department is preparing demand notice to recover this amount from telecom operators. There is no question of letting this revenue go,” said a telecom ministry official.