View: Government must act to help telcos

NEW DELHI: An already strained telecom sector stares at bankruptcy-driven shrinkage, burdening banks with a fresh load of bad loans, and leaving consumers to the tender mercies of a virtual duopoly, following the recent Supreme Court order that allows the government to extort a share of telecom companies’ non-telecom revenues since 2003, along with penalty and interest.

The government must sort this mess out, not just for the sake of the telecom sector but to redeem India’s reputation as a country where it is still possible to do business. For this, the government would have to find the courage to exorcise the ghost of ‘notional loss to the exchequer’ let loose by former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai, whose wild estimate of the government having lost up to Rs 1,76,000 crore by allocating, rather than auctioning off, spectrum while granting a clutch of licences in late 2007,