The political drama, entirely manufactured by the UPA government, over the inter-ministerial ?background paper? on the 2G issue is refusing to die down. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee made a public statement that the controversial inferences drawn in the background paper did not reflect his views. Was the finance minister then implying that the views were those of the other ministry representatives, notably from the Prime Minister?s Office, who sat on the inter-ministerial committee? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as is his wont, is maintaining a sphinx-like silence, something that has become his style statement!
However, law minister Salman Khurshid strongly defended P Chidambaram over the weekend. ?Mr Chidambaram, even after the Cabinet decision, continued to argue for auction. As finance minister, he could not change the policy as it was a Cabinet decision. Could Chidambaram alone have overturned the Cabinet decision? What was the other way for market determination once the Cabinet had decided against auction of spectrum,? the Union law minister asked Karan Thapar in a television interview.
Salman Khurshid?s defence of Chidambaram is significant because as the country?s law minister his words must carry some weight when it comes to judging the legality of the issue. Khurshid scoffed at the claims of the BJP leader Arun Jaitley that under Section 13 (i) (d) (ii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, Chidambaram was guilty of giving an unwarranted pecuniary advantage to licence allottees.
?Can you explain how this means criminal culpability? Our position, based on Planning Commission documents, was we were not there to make money.
We were there to ensure there should be maximum coverage, there should be affordable telephony available to people,? Khurshid said.
It is interesting to note that the BJP?s new line of attack, i.e., invoking Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, is an attempt to rope in other members of the UPA Cabinet only because the government itself has somewhat muddied the waters by failing to explicitly separate the criminality involved in the implementation of the spectrum allocation from the larger telecom policy itself.
It is true the old spectrum allocation policy was sub-optimal, especially in the new situation where the demand for spectrum had far exceeded supply as the mobile subscriber base grew by leaps and bounds after 2003. It is also true that a sub-optimal policy often lends itself to corruption. But the policy itself cannot be dubbed criminal.
If that is so, the entire Cabinet should be culpable for not being able to push through auction as the best means of allocating resources. After all, didn?t the Prime Minister himself write to A Raja recommending he consider a transparent mechanism, including auction, to allocate scarce spectrum. Raja wrote back to the Prime Minister suggesting in the interest of urgently expanding teledensity he would give the first lot of licences on a first-come first-served basis and later look at auctions for the subsequent round of licensing. The Prime Minister took this at face value and let Raja continue his work.
So it is very important to separate a policy decision from the criminality of implementation. As for Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, which Jaitley has invoked, its over-interpretation could paralyse government functioning itself.
There are many existing policy regimes where pecuniary advantage may have accrued to licensees due to implementation problems. Take the classic example of the well-documented problems involved with kerosene subsidies. Many inter-ministerial government documents, during the NDA and UPA regimes alike, have clearly recorded how illegal mixing of kerosene with diesel results in about 30-40% of all kerosene subsidies getting diverted to those running transport fuel stations.
Assuming annually about R10,000 crore worth of kerosene subsidy is getting diverted illegally, one could stretch the argument to say government officials are culpable under Section 13 (i) (d) (ii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act as the same policy continues in spite of the instances of criminality documented by the government. So, should the CBI launch cases against all finance ministers over the past two decades who were responsible for delivering subsidies which got illegally diverted at the implementation level? It is the government?s stated policy to supply kerosene to the poor at subsidised rates. But, if kerosene gets pilfered along the way, should criminal charges be brought against the Cabinet which took the decision to subsidise kerosene? The absurdity of this proposition stares you in the eye.
These are clearly governance issues that need to be fixed through better enforcement. However, in handling the 2G spectrum issue, the UPA itself is responsible for creating confusion. It gained a clear advantage when the CBI had launched an independent Supreme Court-monitored probe.
For the first time in decades a serving Cabinet minister, bureaucrats and several business heads were arrested on charges of malfeasance. Instead of taking advantage of such actions, the UPA is losing itself in internal strife and power struggles. The Opposition will focus its attack on Chidambaram because it reckons that a section of the Congress leadership is ill-disposed towards the home minister. The Congress party loves to provide such ammunition to the Opposition. Governance becomes a casualty in the process.
mk.venu@expressindia.com