Former cabinet secretary wanted Rs35,000 core 2G spectrum allocation entry fee

In his deposition before the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining 2G spectrum scam, former cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar said he had favoured the entry fee for 2G spectrum allocation to be Rs35,000 crore so that the government could earn more revenue.

According to a PTI report, in his letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2007, Chandrasekhar had recommended the amount, which was around 21 times the Rs1,651 crore on which the allocation had been made.

Chandrashekhar was the cabinet secretary between June 2007 to June 2011. He said he had been asked by the prime minister to look into the issue of financial implications with regard to the recommendations of TRAI on allocation of 2G spectrum.

In his response on 26 November, 2007, Chandrasekhar suggested that if entry fee or revenue sharing or spectrum fee were changed then the government could net more revenue, the report said citing sources.

While suggesting that the entry fee, which was Rs1,658 crore, needed to be hiked to Rs35,000 crore, the former top bureaucrat said since the Department of Telecommunications was the administrative ministry on the issue, it was upto it to take a decision based on existing policy.

At the same time, he insisted that the fee, on which the allocations were made, did not amount to any loss and on the controversial 25 March, 2011 note which suggested that the then finance minister P Chidambaram could have insisted on auction, Chandrasekhar told the JPC that the note was entirely an internal document of the finance ministry.

"It was not expected that there would be any inputs from the Cabinet Secretariat... I never asked for or saw the note prepared in the matter by the Ministry of Finance since I considered it be an internal note of that Ministry," he told the committee in a written submission.