New Delhi, July 27 - Defending the policy of giving licenses without auctioning spectrum, Communications and IT Minister A. Raja Monday said his decision to issue telecom licenses at nominal rates has led to higher tele-density and fetched huge revenue for the government.

In his nearly two-hour reply to a debate on the functioning of his ministry in the Rajya Sabha, Raja said: 'We have so far collected Rs.68,000 crore. In 2007-08 alone the government got Rs.23,000 crore.'

During the debate, the opposition alleged a 'huge monumental scam' in the spectrum allocation and said Raja was 'skirting core issue' that whether the Rs.1,651 crore license fee was a fair value.

Raja held the telecom regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), responsible for the low entry fee and said it was the regulator which in in 2001 recommended that the entry fee should be nominal.