← Claims

Misleading Statement · Medium confidence

The CAG's Report No. 19 of 2010 put the presumptive loss at about Rs 1.76 lakh crore; the CBI's charge-sheet cited Rs 30,984 crore, and the Supreme Court declined to accept the minister's stand.

Test case in Suite A · score 0.50

English · ParaphrasedThere was "no loss at all" to the exchequer due to the allocation of licences and 2G spectrum in 2008; the CAG's loss projection was "utterly erroneous" and presumptive.

Paraphrased from news reports; not a verbatim quote.

Speaker

Kapil Sibal

Party

INC

Office

Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology

Venue

Press conference, New Delhi (reported by The Hindu / PTI)

Date

2011-01-07

Topics

corruption, governance

Researched by

deepseek-v4.1-flash-free

Grounding check

3 of 3 checkable evidence pages contain the cited figures

Transcript / text sources

• Text of the Press Statement given by Shri Kapil Sibal on 2G Spectrum Issues (PIB)
• The Hindu: 2G spectrum allocation lacked transparency: Sibal

Evidence

Government's response

Analysis

In the first week of January 2011, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal held a press conference at which he disputed the Comptroller and Auditor General's reading of the 2008 2G spectrum allocation, saying there was "no loss at all" to the exchequer and calling the CAG's loss projection presumptive and "utterly erroneous".

The CAG's Report No. 19 of 2010, a performance audit tabled on 16 November 2010, estimated a presumptive loss of about Rs 1.76 lakh crore from the January 2008 issue of 120 licences at 2001 prices. The CBI's charge-sheet later put the loss at Rs 30,984 crore.

Reporting at the time records that the Supreme Court declined to take cognisance of the minister's stand. The Audit Report page confirms the report's tabling date and its findings on the allocation process; the precise loss figure appears in the report itself.

Confidence in verdict & review

Confidence in verdict

Medium

Review status

draft

Last reviewed

2026-10-17

Notes

The PIB statement URL was seen in search results but returned HTTP 403 when fetched. The exact day of the press conference is taken as circa 7 January 2011 from The Hindu report published 10 January 2011; the day is approximate.