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In a major development having implications for the corporate sector, the Supreme Court on Thursday cancelled the 122 2G spectrum licences granted by former telecom minister A. Raja on the ground that they were issued in a “totally arbitrary and unconstitutional” manner.
Imposing a fine of Rs five crore each on three telecom companies, which offloaded their shares after getting the licenses, the court directed regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to make fresh recommendations on allocation of 2G licences.
Asking the government to take steps on the recommendations of TRAI within a month, a bench comprising justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly said the allocation of spectrum will be done through the policy of auction within four months.
The order came on petitions filed by NGO CPIL and Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy alleging scam in the allocation of spectrum licences by Raja in January, 2008 during the tenure of UPA-I government, on which the CAG had assumed the presumptive loss of upto Rs 1.76 lakhs.
The 122 licences were given by Raja for over Rs 9,000 crore, while 3G auctions for a smaller number of licences had fetched the government a sum of Rs 69,000 crores.
The companies that are set to lose on account of the cancellation of the licences are Uninor (joint venture between Unitech and Telenor of Norway), Loop Telecom, Sistema Shyam (joint venture between Shyam and Sistema of Russia), Etisalat DB (joint venture between Swan and Etisalat of UAE), S Tel, Videocon, Tatas and Idea.
On Janata Party president, Subramanian Swamy’s plea for prosecution of Home Minister P Chidambaram, the Supreme Court has left it to the trial court to decide on probe against Mr Chidambaram in 2G case. The trial should decide on the Mr. Chidambaram's alleged in the 2G spectrum scam within two weeks, it further said.
Swamy's reaction
Reacting to the Supreme Court judgement, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy said the country could be justifiably proud of Supreme Court on the 2G verdict. "2G is a big scam and it is a collective failure of the government", Dr. Swamy alleged.
