All 122 telecom licenses scrapped by the Supreme Court

The Apex court quashes all the 122 telecom licenses, leaves Chidambaram’s fate in the hands of the trial court

The Supreme Court on 02-02-2012 (Thursday) cancelled all 122 2G licenses issued under 2G spectrum scandal in the year 2008. Bench comprised of justice G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly who monitored investigation in the scam delivered the verdict. Two major companies Swan Telecom and Unitech wireless who have also lost their licenses, have been imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore.  21 licenses of Videocon, 9 of Idea, 3 of Tata, 22 Uninor, 6 of S-Tel, 21 Sistema Shyam, 13 of Swan and 21 of Loop licenses were scrapped.

The verdict is for the Public Interest Litigation filed by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy questioning the process of allocation of spectrum to the new entrants in 2008. He appreciated the Supremecourt judgement and added, “"This is the best judgment which could come... the country can be justifiably proud of the Supreme Court.”

On the other hand the affected telecom operators are shocked by the verdict and have reacted strongly to it. In a statement Idea Cellular said, “Idea Cellular has unnecessarily been caught in this situation of cancelled licenses, just because the licenses were granted in January, 2008 which was as late as 18 months from the date of application. In fact, Idea Cellular had filed a Petition in TDSAT inter alia seeking to isolate our application from the 2007/08 applications, and thus requesting for priority under the then DoT policy of “first come first serve. It is unfortunate that a serious incumbent operator like Idea Cellular is being made to suffer due to this cancellation of licenses, despite being fully compliant at each stage of the license allocation. We will study in detail the above Supreme Court judgment and explore all possibilities to protect our investment.”

Uninor too has expressed its concern over the verdict avering, “We have been unfairly treated as we simply followed the government process we were asked to. We are shocked to see that Uninor is being penalized for faults the court has found in the government process. The order does not stop our operations for now. We will study the order in detail and exercise all options available to ensure that Uninor continues to operate in India. We also expect the authorities to ensure that our 36 million customers, 17500 workforce and 22,000 partners are not unjustly affected.”

Additionally the Supreme Court has left the decision against the Home Minister P Chidabaram with the trial courts where the matter is still pending.  Commenting on the prosecution against Chidambaram, Swamy said, "At this stage, since the matter is in the trial court and the orders have been reserved, the trial court is perfectly competent to decide on this matter, whether Mr. Chidambaram should be proceeded against or not.