The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a plea to suspend immediately 2G spectrum licences of telecom companies found to be “ineligible” and/or “not fulfilled their mandatory roll-out obligations.”
The court also said if the 2G licences are going to be cancelled, they cannot be done solely on the basis of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report.
It noted that the telecom operators will have to be heard before a decision is taken. It said that every action of the Government after the petitions on the issue were filed will be subject to the court's order in the case.
The court — which is already hearing petitions by the NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) and the Janata Party President, Dr Subramanian Swamy, seeking cancellation of 2G licences awarded to telcos — was hearing an interim application filed by CPIL.
As the final order in the case may not come immediately, CPIL wanted the court to pass interim directions to the Centre to suspend the 2G licences in the meantime. Besides, CPIL, represented by advocate Mr Prashant Bhushan, sought to restrain the Centre from regularising any telecom licence after charging some penalty or compounding any licence violation.
CPIL termed as “credible” the CAG's estimate of Rs 1.76-lakh-crore loss to the exchequer due to the Centre's 2G spectrum allocation process. However, senior advocates Mr Harish Salve, Mr A.M. Singhvi, Mr Soli Sorabjee and others appearing for telecom companies contended that it has already been pointed out by the Government that there could be errors in the computation of loss by the CAG.
Stating that the issue of regularisation of licences was pending before TDSAT, the Attorney-General, Mr G. E. Vahanvati, sought three weeks to respond to the issue. The court granted the time and said it will take up the matter again on March 1.