In the new telecom policy, private telecom companies, a few of them foreign ones, have been spared of the licensing fees and in lieu, these companies will now be required to share revenue they earn with the government. Mr. Jagmohan was firm in sticking to the licence fee regime - a system not to the liking of the telecom operators and he had to go. The group on telecommunication (GOT) set up by the BJP government itself had objected to switching to the revenue sharing method citing loss of govt. revenue and the Finance Minister manned by one of Mr. Vajpayee's party - also opposed the new formula, touted allegedly by Mr. Vajpayee himself. And the CPI(M) having access to govt-documents, and holding some unrefutable information from other quarters, asked the Prime Minister to convene the session of the Rajya Sabha for a debate on the telecom policy, but Mr. Vajpayee or the BJP turned it down being afraid of disclosures embarrassing the govt. Even the President of India, Mr. K.R. Narayanan, the Election Commission have also regretted the govt. move on the new telecom policy.

So the people of the country want to know the facts behind the BJP's hurry in implementing a policy that has been widely controversial.

On Friday the CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee told a Press conference in Calcutta that the Prime Minister Mr. Vajpayee would have to answer all queries raised on the new telecom policy before the people of the country as the Prime Minister's Office had directly intervened in pushing the new policy. Chatterjee was the Leader of the CPI(M) in the dissolved Lok Sabha. Mr. Nilotpal Basu a Rajya Sabha M.P. of the CPI(M) was also present. It was the claim of the PMO that the private telecom companies operating in the four metropolitan cities and elsewhere in the country sustained a 'huge' loss and the new telecom policy was intended to curb their losses and rejuvenate the telecom services. But the CPI(M) leaders contended that the Government's view were unacceptable in that none of the eight telecom companies operating in the four metropolitan cities was running at a loss; rather in the past three years they had earned a huge profit. The documents released by the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Price (BICP), a govt. organisation on Thursday in Delhi, corroborated the views expressed by the two CPI(M) leaders. Yet Mr. Vajpayee and his govt. offered the largesse of fabulous amount to the cell phone companies. And because of the govt.'s munificence, the govt.'s exchequer is likely to be lighter by Rs. 3000 million in the current fiscal itself. In the next 10 years, the government's revenue loss would amount to a whooping Rs. 50,0000 million which if the generosity was not shown to the companies by the BJP would have accrued to the govt. coffers. What for the BJP government showered this generosity on the cell phone companies?

Chatterjee also described as 'totally untrue' the government's claim that he had written a letter to the Prime Minister recommending acceptance of the new telecom policy. He had not asked the caretaker government to take any decision jeopardising the national interest Chatterjee said. He only requested the Prime Minister to consider the points raised by the private telecom companies. He had written the letter to the Prime Minister in his capacity as the Chairman of Parliament Standing Committee attached to the Telecom Ministry, Chatterjee said. Mr. Chatterjee said that he had not written the letter to Mr. Vajpayee as a BJP leader or as a private citizen.

Chatterjee wondered how this letter written to the Prime Minister in his official capacity reached the BJP's party office.

Referring to the proposed revenue sharing in the new telecom policy, Nilotpal Basu said there was a big unanswered gap in the new policy as nothing had been clearly spelt about the quantum of revenue to be generated or the rates in the revenue sharing mechanism at which the companies would have to pay to the government.