Pradip Baijal is an officer of the

Indian Administrative Service The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the Public administration, administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. The IAS is one of the three All India Services along with the Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian ...

(IAS) who retired as the chief of the

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is a regulatory body set up by the Government of India under section 3 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997. It is the regulator of the telecommunications sector in India. ...

(TRAI). Baijal held several senior administrative positions in the Ministry of Finance and Industries at state level but first came into prominence as the

disinvestment Disinvestment refers to the use of a concerted economic boycott to pressure a government, industry, or company towards a change in policy, or in the case of governments, even regime change. The term was first used in the 1980s, most commonly in ...

secretary in 1999 and was part of the team that was involved in the disinvestment of various Govt companies like BP, VSNL, IPCL and Maruti. He is credited for the sale of Maruti which resulted in a Rs 1000 crore

control premium A control premium is an amount that a buyer is sometimes willing to pay over the current market price of a publicly traded company in order to acquire a controlling share in that company. If the market perceives that a public company's profit and ...

for the government). He retired as the Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in March 2006. Post retirement, Baijal setup Noesis Strategic Consulting Company.

Education

He was trained as an engineer before he joined the

. Baijal earned his BE (Honours) in Mechanical Engineering from University of Roorkee; now renamed the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He took part in a one-year visiting fellowship at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

on the Privatisation of Public Enterprise.

Career

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. 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 has trained telecom regulators on behalf of the World Bank (Infodev) in Africa. He similarly works for ITU in Southeast Asia and has also undertaken restructuring of telecom regulation in Lao, Myanmar, and Oman, and has lectured ministers and regulators in Southeast Asia on reforms and regulation. He had also taken training classes on power regulation in 1999, in Vietnam. He is on the boards of Nestle, GVK, and Patni Computers, and advisory boards of the India Oil Corporation, Infrastructure Development Finance Company. For a few months in 2009, he was the chairman of an advisory committee to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board in India. He was Chairman of the

(TRAI).

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 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 Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

and

Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...

. He has recently self-published a book and released it on Amazon. "This is an honest account of the journey of one of India's finest civil servants .... and it is a clarion call to stop the witch hunt practices, otherwise Baijal might just be the last of his tribe to have the courage to carry out big and bold reforms. The India of today cannot afford this. " - Mr. Deepak Parekh

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baijal, Pradip Living people IIT Roorkee alumni 2G spectrum case Indian Administrative Service officers 1943 births