PM did not look other way, says his office

Dismissing reports suggesting that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had “looked the other way” on the issue of granting 2G licences, his office issued a statement on Sunday saying that a noting attributed to the PMO had been quoted out of context and Singh’s approach had been to create a “level playing field between existing operators and new entrants”.

Reacting to reports quoting communication with the DoT in January 2008 that carried a noting saying the PM “does not want a formal communication and wants PMO to be at arm’s length”, the PMO said “unwarranted inferences” have been drawn from the noting.

Clarifying the context, the PMO said the noting was in fact recorded on a note proposing an approach to fix a threshold level of spectrum that each operator must have to function, allotting spectrum to new operators only up to the threshold level on payment of normal fees and auctioning the remaining spectrum among all operators.

The PMO said the proposal was to forward these suggestions to DoT for further consideration “on the basis of individual consultations with the main players and TRAI”. It clarified that conflicting interests between existing operators and new entrants were well known at the time and the PMO sent the noting as an “informal suggestion” to DoT.