Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday took a dig at the Congress for celebrating the trial court verdict in the 2G spectrum allocation case, saying that acquittal of all accused in the case was not a proof of the UPA Government’s innocence.
“Some Congress leaders are celebrating. They’re viewing this verdict as a badge of honour and a certification that the 2G spectrum allocation was an honest policy,” Jaitley told mediapersons, the first reaction by the Centre on the judgment.
A special CBI court dropped corruption charges against former Telecom Minister and DMK leader A Raja and a slew of other bureaucrats and corporate executives implicated in the scandal that rocked the UPA-II regime and cost the exchequer thousands of crores in lost revenue. Deriding the celebrations, Jaitley asserted that the UPA’s 2G spectrum allocation policy was “dishonest” and designed to “promote corruption”.
“Even within the policy implementation, there was a huge element of arbitrariness, the cut-off rate was advanced, first come-first serve policy was intended to serve a select few,” he charged.
“The ‘first come, first serve’ policy was altered to ‘first come, first pay’ and the favoured few were informed about the change in policy in advance,” he further alleged.
Jaitley cited the Supreme Court’s judgement scrapping the grant of all spectrum licences for being unfair and arbitrary. He said in 2007 and 2008 spectrum was given not by an auction or by a market mechanism determining prices of 2007 and 2008 but on basis of price discovery made in 2001. He said per licensee the spectrum value was fixed at Rs 1,734 crore.
When the NDA Government auction the same spectrums, it fetched over Rs 1 lakh croe.
Apart from Jaitely no other BJP leader came forward to talk to media on the 2G case verdict.