'Cartel' blowing up spectrum losses to Rs60,000 crore: Raja

The government - the telecom ministry to be more precise - needed an `undeclared cartel' in the telecom industry to realise that it lost a whopping  Rs60,000 crore when it gave away precious spectrum to telecom start-ups at throw-away prices.

But, communications and IT minister A Raja won't agree. He hit back saying the spectrum price has deliberately been spiked and an ''undeclared cartel'' is behind the controversy.

Raja, who has been under attack ever since two start-up telecom licensees  - Swan and Unitech – sold their spectrum allocated to them at four times its acquisition price to foreign telcos, however, defended these deals and even offered to resign if the allegations were proved.

At a hastily convened press conference, Raja said that spectrum and licences were allocated to new players according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recommendations and that he was willing to resign if proved otherwise.

He said all his decisions conformed to the national Telecom policy, 1999, Cabinet and Parliament approval.

The minister said he was being opposed because he sought to promote competition so that tariffs come down further and tele-density spreads.

Raja's critics say the pan-India licence charge of Rs1,651 crore was a price discovered way back in 2001, and that 2G spectrum should have been auctioned to realise the current market price.

Raja said the Trai dod not favour auctioning the 2G spectrum and that there was nothing wrong in diluting equity by issuing fresh shares as opposed to sale of promoter's equity. Finance minister P Chidambaram had also given him a clean chit on this count, he pointed out.