Editor-in-chief of digital media house ThePrint, Shekhar Gupta wrote that the acquittal of all accused on the 2G scam doesn’t imply that there was no telecom scandal.
In an editorial, Gupta said that such scams often come with screaming headlines, but somewhere down the line the ultimate motive of catching those responsible takes a backseat.
Referring to the ‘Rs 1.76 lakh crore’ 2G scam, the ‘Rs 3 lakh crore plus’ coal scam, and the ‘Rs 75,000 crore’ Commonwealth Games scam, he wrote that the figures have a “ridiculous accounting promiscuity”.
“One after the other, these convenient exaggerations are leading to the unravelling of all these cases. Exaggerating scams make politicians win elections (Bofors, for example), but the guilty always get away,” he wrote in the editorial.
Breaking down the value of the 2G scam, he asked if India’s telecom sector could have paid that high an amount, humorously adding that if the scam’s figure is higher than the defence budget, then why not “simply abolish the defence budget and ask the armed forces to auction little bits of the spectrum they hoard every year?”
He alluded to what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said at a CAG event, cautioning between “activism” and “sensationalism.”
Read the original article on ThePrint.
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