New Delhi, June 30 Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar will head the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) which will meet to take a decision on spectrum pricing, a senior telecom department official said.
“The first meeting of the reconstituted EGoM with Sharad Pawar as head is on July 2,” the official said.
The meeting is crucial as it is being held after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee resigned to contest the presidential poll.
Earlier, the meeting was to take place June 24 but was deferred indefinitely.
The meeting will take place to decide on key issues, including the reserve price of spectrum, mortgaging of spectrum and deferred payments.
Last month, the telecom commission had asked Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman Rahul Khullar to study and analyse the reserve prices proposed earlier and their impact.
TRAI had recommended a reserve price of Rs.3,622 crore for 1 Mhz pan-India spectrum, which is around 10 times higher than the price at which 2G licenses were allocated in 2008 under the then telecom minister A. Raja.
TRAI’s proposal has been highly criticised by the industry and analysts alike. The operators have also said that if implemented this may lead to a 100 percent hike in tariff.