Pramod Mahajan - Government

Government

The Lok Sabha elections of 1996 brought the BJP to power and Mahajan was appointed Defence Minister in Vajpayee's 13 day ministry. When the BJP returned to power in 1998, he was first appointed as advisor to the Prime Minister. He resigned from that post and stood for Rajya Sabha elections in July 1998. He won and in December 1998, he was appointed the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, and Food Processing. A year later, in October 1999, he was moved to Parliamentary Affairs and Water Resources. He relinquished Water Resources a month later in November and took charge of Information Technology (in addition to Parliamentary Affairs).

In 2001, he was appointed to the Communications ministry under controversial circumstances. The earlier telecom policy of the government, formulated in 1994, had allowed private participation in cellular telephony after open bidding, on payment of a license fee determined through the bidding. However, after winning the contracts the telecom companies found themselves unable to pay the fixed license fees, supposedly because the victors fell victim to the Winner's curse. The then Minister for Communications, Jagmohan attempted tough action against the defaulting companies, but was sacked. After this, Prime Minister Vajpayee himself took over the cabinet portfolio (with Ram Vilas Paswan as minister of state) and oversaw the formulation of the New Telecom Policy of 1999. The policy replaced fixed license fees with a revenue sharing agreement, a move that was widely criticized for changing rules midway and causing loss of revenue to the government. Mahajan, who succeeded to the post in August 2001, after a cabinet reshuffle (that also merged the department of Information technology with the Telecommunications portfolio) had the task of implementing this policy. During his tenure, the number of new telephone connections enjoyed unprecedented growth and rentals fell by a large amount. However, he was also accused of favouring Reliance Infocomm by allowing it to offer full nationwide mobility through WLL without payment of the required license fees.

He was also involved in a dispute with the then Disinvestment minister Arun Shourie over the privatization of VSNL. These controversies may have been the reason why he was dropped from the cabinet in the reshuffle of 2003. There was also speculation that he was a casualty of the silent intra-party battle between Vajpayee and Advani. Shourie succeeded him to the Communications portfolio. Mahajan was appointed the General Secretary of the BJP . He contested media speculation that this was a demotion, saying that there were no differences between him and the party and that he had just changed positions from chariot rider to charioteer.