The Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government had cleared the controversial migration policy for telecom operators despite strong reservations by the then Telecom Minister Jagmohan and the Finance Ministry, Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) chief P C Chacko said today.

The dissent note by Jagmohan and the reservations expressed by the Finance Ministry, then headed by Yashwant Sinha, are part of the documents available with the JPC.

The JPC on the telecom policies between 1999 and 2009 on Monday quizzed former Telecom Secretary Anil Kumar who held the office between August 1998 and February 2000.

Chacko said when Kumar was confronted with the dissent note of Jagmohan, he termed it as an observation in which the then Telecom Minister had wanted licensees to clear dues and come afresh.

When Chacko was asked whether it was an observation or a dissent, he said as per records available with the Committee it was a dissent note.

Kumar told the Committee that the Cabinet approved the migration policy as it was good for the health of the telecom industry and its implementation resulted in lower tarrif rates.

Jagmohan was moved to the Urban Development Ministry in the backdrop of his relentless opposition to the New Telecom Policy (NTP). The NTP was passed by the Union Cabinet in 1999 with Vajpayee in charge of the Telecom portfolio.

Kumar launched a spirited defence of the NTP-1999 which included the migration policy from one-time license fee to revenue sharing model for telecom operators.

"Today, we are enjoying the fruits of that decision," Chacko quoted Kumar as saying.

The former Telecom Secretary also sought to dismiss claims of losses due to the migration policy pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General as "hypothetical".

The CAG report of 2000 had said the migration policy had led to losses to the exchequer but had not quantified the same. Recently, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had pegged the losses at Rs 43,000 crore.

Kumar said the fixed licence fee regime was stalling the growth of the telecom sector. He said had the government continued with the fixed licence fee regime, telecom operators would have continued to default on payments.

Asked for the reasons to change the dates for submitting the bank guarantee under the NTP-1999, Kumar told the JPC that the DoT was trying to create a litigation free environment.

On being asked why a uniform approach was adopted when the telecom operators in metros were making profit, Kumar said while operators in metros had large subscriber base their revenue generation was low.

Kumar also told the JPC that the migration policy was necessary to make the NTP-1999 a success. "We would not have had the desired benefits of the NTP-1999 without the migration policy," he said.

Incidentally, Jaswant Singh, a member of the JPC, was heading the Group on Telecom when the NTP-1999 was rolled out.