A. Raja in New Delhi on Friday. (PTI)

New Delhi, Oct. 30: Telecom minister A. Raja — under fire for irregularities in spectrum allocation to telecom newbies in January 2008 — has slammed the NDA for causing the exchequer great losses through the auction of spectrum during its regime.

“On record it has been observed that the licence fee was brought down to Rs 1,000 crore to benefit some operators. The allocation and reduced licence fee are estimated to have cost Rs 1 lakh crore to the government,” Raja told reporters on the sidelines of the Indian Telecom 2009 conference here today.

Raja also alleged that the late Pramod Mahajan, the telecom minister during the NDA regime, had in 2001 acted against the recommendations of the Telecom Commission. He allotted spectrum to operators beyond 4.4MHz without any upfront charge or conformity to subscriber base norms.

“There was no policy of issuing beyond 4.4MHz spectrum to an operator but allocations were made beyond 4.4MHz to some,” Raja said.

Raja alleged that the NDA had made these allocations though there were clear orders that no spectrum would be given in the band of 900MHz.

The BJP-led Opposition has been asking for Raja’s resignation after officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation searched the telecom ministry offices following allegations that spectrum was allocated to the new operators at lower prices, resulting in a loss of over Rs 20,000 crore to the exchequer.

On irregularities in awarding 2G licences, Raja said the spectrum was given in compliance with the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was consulted, while the exercise had the “clear approval” of the solicitor-general.

“All my predecessors followed the same procedure and so did I. In terms of legal norms, there is no deviation,” Raja said, contending that the DoT’s decisions had increased competition and they had been taken without losing sight of Trai’s norms. On cartels, Raja all allegations could be investigated.