Singh simultaneously criticised the government for favouring exports of petroleum products, especially when cement, steel and rice exports were banned to keep domestic prices under check and demanded that the export-oriented unit status given to Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery be cancelled.

In a letter of July 2, Amar Singh alleged, echoing the views of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications, that the Department of Telecom was taking a lenient view on spectrum charges at the behest of GSM operators such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone.

Arguing for indexing the fixed spectrum charge to the growth in revenues of the industry between 2003 and 2008, he said the government could raise as much as Rs 10,000 crore. Further, by hiking the spectrum usage charges beyond 8 Mega Hertz to 2 per cent of adjustable gross revenues, he said, the government could mop up another Rs 5,000 crore.

Singh said as per license conditions, a new operator gets a start-up spectrum of 4.4 MHz in GSM for Rs 1,650 crore, which works out to Rs 375 crore for 1 MHz. In allocating spectrum beyond the license terms of 6.2 MHz, the government must multiply the per MHz charges of Rs 375 crore by a factor of 3.5 — by which revenues of the industry have grown in the last five years. This means a one-time fixed charge of Rs 1,312 crore per additional MHz of spectrum. “I would like to meet you regarding this before any decision is taken so that I may personally tell you about it,” Amar Singh wrote.