Patil committee report an attempt to save Raja: BJP

New Delhi, Feb 4 (PTI) BJP today dubbed the claims ofthe Shivraj Patil Committee on spectrum allotments since 2003as an attempt to bail out former Telecom Minister A Raja andinsisted that only a JPC probe could bring out the truth.

"The BJP will comprehensively respond after goingthrough the contents of the report. However, this wholeattempt is also designed to bail out Mr Raja and theillegalities committed by him," BJP Chief spokesperson RaviShankar Prasad said.

Patil Committee''s report was unveiled by TelecomMinister Kapil Sibal here today. It claims that all spectrumallotments since 2003 by successive governments were"procedurally wrong".

"The NDA has nothing to hide. We have ourselves saidthat let JPC examine every allocation from 1998 itself,"Prasad said.

BJP maintained that NDA was proud of its achievements in"revolutionising" the telecom sector and mobile telephony.

"The entire queue (of telephone connection seekers) wasdone away with. The incoming calls which used to be charged atRs 16 per minute became almost negligible. In the revenuesharing system the number of players gave more money to thegovernment than licence fee because the entire area expandedand mobile became affordable to the poor," Prasad said.

BJP further claimed that teledensity, which was 0.8 percent grew in a phenomenonal manner due to pro-consumer andpro-people policies executed in a fair manner by the NDAgovernment.