There is nothing sinister or diaboLIC about Union minister Kapil Sibal’s latest argument regarding the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India pertaining to the loss to the exchequer from 2G telecom LICences in 2007. The basic argument pertaining to the erroneous notion of “presumptive loss” has been made before and Mr Sibal’s arithmetic is credible. Too much need not be made about this being a ministerial...

It also wants exemplary cost recovered from them AMC's LICence should also be cancelled Reddy brothers, others get two weeks to file response The Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee has declared “illegal” the mining done by the Reddy brothers through three leases in Obulapuram mines in the Bellary reserved forest area, and recommended that the LICences be cancelled and exemplary cost recovered from them. In November last, the Forest Bench asked the Committee to...

If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a poLICy of...

“We are extremely pained at the methodology adopted” The government on Friday described as “utterly erroneous and without any basis” the estimated loss of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore arrived at by the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) on account of allocation of 2G spectrum to telecom operators. “We are extremely pained at the methodology adopted by the CAG for arriving at the [allocation loss] figures that have no basis,” Telecom Minister Kapil...

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal today termed “utterly erroneous, baseless and sensational” the government auditor’s estimate that the alleged 2G scam resulted in a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. Sibal gave a detailed explanation of the priorities that drove the telecom poLICy and the benefits over the years to “the aam aadmi” — something his predecessor A. Raja did not or could not articulate till now. Drawing a parallel with free...