A key official who in 2007 steadfastly refused to be heedful of telecom minister A Raja?s directions on the now-controversial 2G licence allocation has been summoned by the public accounts committee (PAC) of Parliament to depose before it. The deposition of DS Mathur, former telecom secretary, who even refused to sign any files on the matter till his retirement on December 31, 2007, could come as an embarrassment for Raja who is drawing flak for allegedly causing huge losses to the exchequer by giving out the valuable licences for a song to eight new players in January 2008.

What could spell trouble for Raja is that Mathur?s appearance before PAC comes on the top of former Trai chairman Nripendra Misra?s deposition before the committee. Misra is also known to have reservations over the way licences were distributed by Raja.

Mathur, who was the department of telecommunications secretary when Raja became telecom minister in May 2007 had opposed the minister?s decision to allocate new licences without first drawing an ?equitable and transparent policy?. The secretary?s opposition was recorded in file notings of the time. It was only after Mathur?s retirement that Raja was able to grant new licences, allegedly causing the exchequer a loss of around Rs 60,000 crore.

The PAC headed by senior BJP leader, Murli Manohar Joshi is already examining the 2G licence/spectrum irregularity. The PAC is one of the most powerful committees of Parliament which scrutinises the financial accounts of the government and public undertakings based on the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

Although the CAG report on the 2G spectrum is still not out, FE had highlighted its initial observations addressed in the form of queries to the DoT centering around a series of irregularities in the grant of licences.

The deposition of Mathur would come as a severe blow to Raja because the former Trai chairman Nripendra Misra has already deposed before the PAC. The Trai recommendations of August, 2007 when Misra was its chairman were cherry-picked by Raja to arbitrarily award the controversial licences which are now being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation at the behest of the Central Vigilance Commission.

For the record, Raja has been maintaining that he had gone by the Trai recommendations. Sources said Misra told the PAC that he had suggested that a new market mechanism should be explored to grant new licences as the last market determined price was arrived at in 2001.

Misra also drew attention to the difference between auctioning of licences and auction of spectrum. He said that though the Trai did not recommend auction of spectrum in the bands being currently used by the telecom operators he did suggest auction of licences. If licences were auctioned, the government would have got its due.

Sources said that apart from Misra, the PAC has so far also heard the deposition of the current Trai chairman, J S Sarma, finance secretary, Ashok Chawla and the current DoT secretary, PJ Thomas. The deposition of the finance secretary is significant because his predecessor, D Subbarao who?s now the RBI Governor had opposed the move to grant the licences at the prices discovered in 2001.

Apart from Joshi the other members of the PAC are: Anandrao Vithoba Adsul, Baliram, Ramen Deka, Naveen Jindal, Satpal Maharaj, Bhartruhari Mahtab, K Sambasiva Rao, Yashwant Sinha, Jitendra Singh, Revati Raman Singh, K Sudhakaran, M Thambidurai, D Venugopal, Arun Kumar Vundavalli (members of the Lok Sabha) and Ashwani Kumar, N Balaganga, Prasanta Chatterjee, NK Singh, Tiruchi Siva and Saif-ud-din Soz (members of the Rajya Sabha).