New Delhi, Dec 9 (PTI): The government today appointed a one-man committee of retired Supreme Court justice Shivaraj V Patil to probe the alleged irregularities in the allocation of 2G spectrum since 2001, a period involving the NDA regime.

Announcing the decision, Telecom and IT minister Kapil Sibal told reporters that the committee will "examine the appropriateness of procedures by the DOT in the issuances of licences and allocation of spectrum during the period 2001-2009...

"There are several terms of references, which will be finalised with the one man committee."

Sibal said the committee will look into various procedures followed in issuing licences during the 2001-09 period.

"Broadly speaking, we are looking at the internal departmental procedures adopted by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) during the period 2001-09 with the issuance of telecom, access service licences and allocation of spectrum to all telecom access service licencees during the above period," he said.

He said the committee will examine procedures, policies and direction of the DoT and the government, and if they were consistently followed or not. Sibal said the task of the committee would be to check whether the procedure was fair and transparent keeping with the principles of justice, identify instances of lack of transparency, deficiency in procedures, lapses at the policy level and procedural level.

The panel will also look at "whether there were any violation of the policies that were laid down by the DoT itself and then of course remedial measures in that regard," Sibal added.

The minister said the one-man committee will have the right to call for records, any DoT officials, get a briefing on any matter.