Comments
The Minister for Communications and Telecom, Mr Kapil Sibal, has denied granting any favours to Reliance Communications in the Unified Access Service Licensing (UASL) issue.
He termed the proceedings initiated against him in the Supreme Court by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation as “malicious, motivated and defamatory”.
Mr Sibal was speaking at a Group of Ministers media briefing in which he responded to the allegations made in an affidavit filed by the NGO, which is also a petitioner in the 2G spectrum case.
The affidavit had alleged that the Minister had reduced the penalty against Reliance Communications (RCom) for violations in the UASL Agreement to about Rs 5 crore from Rs 650 crore for all 13 circles.
“I don't know where this Rs 650 crore figure has come from,” the Minister said, clarifying that the figure that he saw in the file sent to him was Rs 50 crore, which was the levy fixed on the licence agreements between the Department of Telecom (DoT) and operators. Ultimately, the operator paid over Rs 5.5 crore as penalty.
The facts of the matter, according to the Minister, were that RCom had switched off the Base Transceiver Systems in late November. A show-cause notice was issued to the company by Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF) on December 21. RCom was given 60 days to reply.
The services were restored on February 16. The Minister said that the file came to him on February 18.
“By the time the file came to me on February 18, the services had been restored. So the issue before me was which provision to apply,” he explained.
As the services were restored, he said he decided to override his bureaucrats' view. He said he had every authority to do so. He took the decision in the context of the “contractual provisions between the USOF and RCom,” he said.
Mr Sibal also termed the affidavit filed by the NGO, for which the advocate is Mr Prashant Bhusan, as the “grossest case of forum shopping”. He expressed his indignation at linking the case with the 2G spectrum issue. “What has this got to do with 2G,” he asked.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.