Pradip Baijal

Pradip Baijal
Personal details
Children	2
Residence(s)	Noida, India
Alma mater	Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
As of 3 January, 2010

Pradip Baijal is an officer of the Indian Administrative Service who retired as chief of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Baijal has been a formidable bureaucrat during his service years, and Business Standard, in an article in 2003 called him a "storm-raiser".

Pradip Baijal held senior administrative positions in the Ministry of Finance and industries at state level but he first came into prominence as the disinvestment secretary in the BJP Govt on 1999 and was part of the team that was involved in the disinvestment of various Govt companies like BP, VSNL, IPCL and Maruti. He managed to extract a Rs 1000 crore control premium for the government as part of the Maruti sale, which is seen as a success. He was appointed chairman of TRAI in a critical phase in 2003 when Arun Shourie of the BJP was minister, and then for a brief time with Dayanidhi Maran. He retired as the Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in March 2006.

In 2010, his houses and offices were raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation as part of their investigation into the telecom scam involving lobbyist Niira Radia.

Education

He was trained as an engineer before he joined the Indian Administrative Service. Baijal earned his BE (Honours) in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee. He took part in a one year visiting fellowship at Oxford University on the Privatisation of Public Enterprise.

Career

Pradip Baijal is a 1966 batch IAS officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre. He held senior administrative positions in the Ministry of Finance and industries at state level but he first came into prominence as the disinvestment secretary in the BJP Govt on 1999 and was part of the team that was involved in the disinvestment of various government companies like BP, VSNL, IPCL and Maruti.

During his tenure, TRAI articulated and adopted allegedly pro-development and consumer-friendly regulatory practices and made important recommendations on the growth of telecom services in rural India to the Government of India. TRAI has also urged the industry to think of next generation telecom networks. Baijal, directly dealt with a variety of key issues impacting the telecom industry in India, including changes to the Access Deficit Charge (ADC) that punctured mobile phone bills.

Accomplishments

He is credited with suggesting a reduction in ADC, a fee that private operators pay BSNL for compensating its rural operations, and its eventual withdrawal by 2009.

Baijal also pushed for unified licensing, under which an operator can offer telecom and broadcasting services on a single licence and next generation networks for Indian telecom sector that would bring down the network costs significantly. As a result of his work, the sector grew remarkably - from adding 0.2 million subsribers a year, the sector had added close to 20 million subscribers monthly by the time he retired. Shosteck, a research Group based in US wrote: “This study analyzes the Indian mobile market to understand the lessons that it might offer the rest of the world. It concludes that India’s “Unified License“ – with which any operator can offer any access technology, whether landline or wireless – has enabled for more robust competition than otherwise would be possible”.

Baijal received several acknowledgements for his role as TRAI Chairman. To quote from a 2005 report titled “The Indian Telecom Industry” produced by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, “Indian telecommunications today benefits from among the most enlightened regulation in the region, and arguably in the world. The sector, sometimes considered the ‘poster-boy for economic reforms’ has been among the chief beneficiaries of the post-1991 liberalization… Despite several hiccups along the way, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the independent regulator, has earned a reputation for transparency and competence”

Controversies

His tenure as TRAI chairman coincided with policy recommendations that are alleged to have benefited some telecom companies, including Reliance Telecom and Tata Teleservices. Pradip Baijal was the TRAI Chairman when the technology neutral "Unified Access License" was implemented, a policy change which allowed fixed line operators who had paid lower license fees to offer mobile phone services, at first in the limited WLL mode (Wireless in Local Loop) and later, following an out of court settlement between mobile operators and the BJP govt, full mobility. The change in policy took place after several rounds of consultation with the industry participants but was regarded controversial because it allowed companies like Tata and Reliance who had paid much lower license fees for limited mobility to provide full mobility competing with players who had paid much higher fees for the same privilege. The TRAI at the time also made a recommendation to the Group of Ministers in 2003, where he recommended a fixed charge of Rs.1658 crores as license fee for UAS (Unified Access License) without adjustments for inflation or market growth since 2001. In 2010 Baijal's house and office were raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation as part of their investigations into the 2G spectrum scam.

Post-Retirement

Baijal spent a year after retirement writing the book "Disinvestment in India- I Lose and you Gain", published by Pearsons He also co-founded a strategy consulting firm Noesis in partnership with Niira Radia. He also serves on the boards of GVK, Nestle India and Patni Computers. He works as an independent consultant and advisor to several countries including Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.