Ratan Tata answers charges against his group

Ratan Tata answers charges against his group

Dear Rajeev

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Your letter is based on untruths and distortion of facts and l feel compelled to place the real facts, as bluntly as possible before you …

On the issue of various allegations you have made on the so called benefits gained by TTSL (Tata Teleservices Ltd) … The true position is that TTSL has not I repeat not been advantaged in any way by Mr. Raja or any earlier Minister. The company has strictly followed the applicable policy and has been severely disadvantaged, as you are well aware, by certain powerful politically connected operators who have willfully subverted policy … Even those that were granted license and spectrum have failed to effect any meaningful rollout of services. Strangely, you have chosen to ignore this fact and singled out TTSL who have, in fact, put in place a network supporting 82 million subscribers, despite the fact that they have been deprived of spectrum in Delhi and the 39 key districts over the past 3 years as mentioned earlier. How could you or anybody possibly consider this to be a beneficial situation for TTSL?

… You will no doubt remember that in 2005 I made an issue of the fact that spectrum was a scarce resource and needed to be paid for rather than given free as was being proposed … I believe that TTSL was the only operator that returned spectrum when demanded by DoT…

Your affiliation with a political party is well known and it appears that their political aspirations and their endeavor to embarrass the Prime Minister and the ruling party may well have been the motivation behind your letter ... We should all note that many of the flip flops in the telecom policy occurred during the BJP regime ... the recent policy broke the powerful cartel which had been holding back competition.