The industry chambers on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the 2G spectrum judgement making it mandatory to allocate all natural resources only through auction has caused a lot of uncertainty.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) contended that the February 2 verdict was specific to the spectrum allocation and its conclusion that the first-come-first-served (FCFS) policy was illegal per se needs clarification as it was in conflict with the previous judgements of the apex court.

FICCI’s counsel and senior advocate C S Sundram submitted that the Presidential Reference arising out of the 2G spectrum verdict needs to be answered by the five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia as it would clear the uncertainty prevailing in the industry over the issue of allocation of natural resources.

CII’s counsel Harish Salve said the mode of allocation of natural resources has to be decided on a case-to-case basis and it would not be proper to hold the FCFS policy illegal per se.

“It is dangerous,” Salve said when the bench referred to the paragraphs in the judgement, which termed the FCFS policy as illegal per se.

He said the FCFS policy was held as illegal in the 2G spectrum verdict as there were reasons to give a finding that the process adopted in allocation of radio waves was not proper.

The senior advocate said some of the incidents like making of bank draft of Rs 1600 crore at a particular time from various places and other acts made the procedure for allocation of spectrum a doubtful starter.

Salve was responding to various questions of the bench, also comprising justices D K Jain, J S Khehar, Dipak Mishra and Ranjan Gogoi.

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