Loss in NDA regime also presumptive: Shourie

"These presumptive loss calculations are always misleading," Shourie said.

Hitting back at Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal’s claim of Rs 1.5 lakh crore loss to exchequer in the 2G spectrum allocation during the NDA regime,former Telecom Minister Arun Shourie today termed his calculations as “presumptive”.

Shourie,who served the ministry in 2003,defended the change in policy by the NDA government saying if the shift had not come about,the whole sector would have collapsed.

“These presumptive loss calculations are always misleading and that itself destroys the illustrative figures that Mr Sibal gave for the NDA saying Rs 1.50 lakh crore,that’s another presumptive calculation,” Arun Shourie told a private channel here.

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Sibal,while talking to reporters here today,said the change in policy by the NDA regime in 1999 from fixed licence fee to revenue share regime caused a “net” revenue loss of Rs 1.50 lakh crore and questioned CAG’s estimates of presumptive loss at Rs 1.76 lakh crore due to 2G spectrum allocation.

“He rightly read out the figures of the great growth in the sector because of those policies,which were that of NDA,” Shourie said.

The BJP member lauded Sibal for his stern stance for taking action against defaulters.

“I think Kapil Sibal is correct on 3-4 points and I would urge him to advance the policy the way the NDA was advancing in its final months,” he said.

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