Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is believed to have left it to telecom minister A Raja to resolve the tangle over allocation of spectrum, an issue that has brought industry bigwigs like Reliance Communications' Anil Ambani and Bharti Airtel's Sunil Mittal face to face.
Asked if Singh, who has been approached by some of the interested parties on the issue, is likely to intervene to resolve the impasse, sources in the know of developments said that Raja has been given full responsibility of resolving it.
Following the failure of talks initiated by telecom secretary D S Mathur with service providers for arriving at a consensus, speculation was rife that Singh could also consider referring the issue to an Empowered Gro
up of Ministers but this could not be substantiated.
While Raja had earlier informed Singh the ministry's decision rejecting suggestion of Law Ministry for formation of a GoM, Mathur had also made a detailed presentation to the Cabinet Secretary on the position taken by the ministry.
The controversial issue of spectrum allocation has divided the entire industry with GSM operators such as Bharti Airtel demanding first right on the frequency. CDMA players such as RCoM and new applicants also want to exercise their right to start mobile services with the GSM platform.
DoT has already said that enough spectrum was available to accommodate new players even after meeting the requirements of existing operators.