Right or wrong? Scam or not? A ₹1.76 lakh crore scam - just notional?

CBI and Enforcement Directorate of Government of India, based on CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) report, said that it was a big and unprecedented scam. The Supreme Court of India cancelled all the 122 telecom licenses in 2012.

After the criminal prosecution launched by the agencies was rejected and closed by the CBI Court in Delhi recently, there has been a great uproar on the entire episode. 

Who is at fault? -the CBI & ED for want of proper presentation and prosecution? Or the CAG who misread the procedure adopted by the GoI under the PMs - Narasimha Rao, Deve Gowda, I.K.Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh in this regard.

Everyone - in all the three wings of Constitutional Authorities - seems to have forgotten the basic and simple economic principle, namely, the "Law of Demand and Supply". When the demand was less and the supply was not scarce, the spectrum was allocated on the basis of administered prices - everyone including the consumers benefitting in the process. But when the demand increased and the licensees wanted to make a killing at the expense of public interest, the matter became serious and the credentials of the concerned players were doubted and interpreted to the disadvantage of all. Unfortunately the Apex Court too failed to read the distinction and differentiation in the application of a procedure adopted by the Government over a period of time and cancelled the entire basket of licenses and led to a chaotic situation that we are observing today.

Manish Tiwari, former I & B Minister in the UPA government and member of JPC that examined the telecom sector for 1994-2009 opines that the conclusions in CAG reports were flights of fantasy and an exercise in fiction writing.

Well, the truth is that the auction procedure was the appropriate and best method of allocation  as and when the time was ripe. And the people involved in the allocation of spectrum in different periods made money, no doubt, according to their needs and skills. 

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