Upping the ante in the spectrum battle, Telecom Minister A Raja today went on an offensive slamming the BJP-led NDA government. He alleged that during their tenure massive losses had been caused to the exchequer by giving operators like Vodafone Essar and Bharti Airtel spectrum far in excess of what their licences permitted. He also retaliated against BJP leader Arun Jaitley's allegations about a scam in the 2G licence allocation.

The minister said, "Without any Cabinet approval, additional spectrum had been allotted to the tune of 250 mhz without any upfront charge. That too more specifically beyond 8-10 mhz, even there is no revenue share. Does it mean to say that the spectrum available in this country, 250 mhz, is their ancestral property.
Here is a verbatim transcript of Siddharth Zarabi's comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.
This goes back to 1996 when the first allotments for spectrum happened. Clearly what Mr Raja is trying to say is that the spectrum that was given to the new operators recently bundled with their license was not in conflict with what was done in the past.
There have been three occasions, 1996, 2001, 2004 when NDA government in fact allotted significant amounts of spectrum as the minister mentioned to the operators, successively reduced the charges, reduced the license fee and that is what Mr Raja is hitting out at, the fact by putting a Rs 1 lakh crore figure to the alleged spectrum scam caused by the BJP.
So clearly while this is a political issue, the fact remains on the ground that the original licenses in telecom came with 4.4 mhz of spectrum. Then additionally it was raised to 6.2 mhz and beyond that spectrum was allocated to operators because networks grew, there were many more subscribers. This is what Mr Raja seems to be questioning. Clearly a retaliatory move against Mr Arun Jaitley by also saying that Mr Jaitley had appeared in court last year for a new operator to defend his case. So this is not the last we will hear of it probably more such remarks will come in the next few days.