A new Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) official has been brought in the department of telecom (DoT) committee on spectrum in place of the current member K K Minocha, deputy director general, USOF, after the latter complained of being overloaded with responsibility.
Minocha, in a letter, has cited increased burden of work for the reason to be relieved from his committee job, but people in the know, who did not want to be named, said there must have been pressure on him to put his signature on some decision which he may not have wanted to do.
The new USOF member – DK Khanna, DDG (USOF) – has been brought on board after Minocha had shot off a letter conveying he was not able "to do justice" to the committee work after being burdened with more tasks than he could handle.
"It will not be out of context to mention here that signing of report without reading and understanding the issue is not desirable. Moreover, in the spectrum meetings of licencing and WPC (wireless planning and coordination), the present of USOF is not crucial," he said in the letter.
With the spectrum auction around the corner and the industry in the midst of restructuring after the 2G scam, the DoT committee has been extremely busy with several crucial issues relating to spectrum trading, valuation and reserve pricing of airwaves of licenses expiring in 2015-16, spectrum sharing and others, all of which are time bound.
Minocha said of late the USOF work had also increased several folds due to National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) and other such projects without a corresponding strengthening of staff.
"All these projects are highly time bound and monitored at the highest level. This requires sufficient attention to the assigned work. In addition USOF has been assigned the job of dealing with parliament questions," he said in the letter.
Owing to mounting work pressure, Minocha had requested to be "relieved from committee" and asked the government to assign some other DDG with broad functional responsibility (BFR) with the job.
"So that they (the new member) can devote full time to the committee work and thereby do justice to it and undersigned (Minocha) can do justice to increased work of USOF," he wrote in the letter.
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