Alleging a Rs 18,000 crore scam in telecom spectrum allocation, Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh on Saturday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the matter.
A day after Communication Minister A Raja dismissed any scam in spectrum allocation and offered to resign if his decision to allocate 2G spectrum to telecom companies is found to be wrong, the SP leader raised the issue with the Prime Minister.
"I have raised the issue with Prime Minister and expressed my anguish," Singh said after the meeting but did not elaborate what his response was.
The SP leader said that "many national and multinational telecom companies are using more than their share of spectrum allocated to them by TRAI and are violating its norms ... And a scam of Rs 18,000 crore is going on".
He added that "companies like Vodafone, Airtel and Idea are violating TRAI norms."
The SP leader has been raising the issue of "misuse" of spectrum allocation since quite sometime and had also written to the PM on it earlier this year. The issue was also discussed during the first meeting of the Congress-SP coordination committee held in August this year.
The CPI(M) has also been speaking of discrepancies in the matter and has been demanding an inquiry, alleging that the "faulty" allocation method had cost over Rs 60,000 crore to the national exchequer.
{{/usCountry}}The CPI(M) has also been speaking of discrepancies in the matter and has been demanding an inquiry, alleging that the "faulty" allocation method had cost over Rs 60,000 crore to the national exchequer.
{{/usCountry}}The SP leader who also met UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi along with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, also wanted the government to reduces the prices of petroleum products.
"If Petroleum Minister Murli Deora does not roll back petrol price hike, then he may have to face the music from the common man," he said.