By Soibam Rocky Singh
The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Central government and several telecom companies in a petition alleging violation in allocation of spectrum by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to existing operators in excess of their contractual entitlement without charging extra spectrum fee.
A bench of Justice GS Singhvi and Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya sought response from the Centre on the allegation of the ‘huge’ loss of public money to the national exchequer within four weeks.
The court also sought the response of major service providers such as Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, Reliance, Aircel, Loop and Spice within four weeks.
The order of the apex court came while hearing a petition filed by Telecom Watchdog, an NGO, seeking the transfer of a similar case (granting of excess spectrum to telecom operators) which is pending before the Delhi High Court to the Supreme Court.
The petition alleged that excess spectrum above 6.2 MHz were allotted to telecom operators without any licence provision. The petitioner has also sought direction to recover market price from the telecom operators retrospectively for the said spectrum and a CBI investigation into the said allotment.
The apex court had on January 30 on a similar petition by lawyer Yakesh Anand had sought the Centre’s response on the issue.
Anand had alleged that excess spectrum was distributed without any guidelines or notifications and that neither the DoT nor the Wireless Planning Cell (WPC) investigated how and by whom this “excess spectrum” was allegedly allocated to the various private telecom service providers, including Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone Essar, Reliance Telecom, Aircel & Spice Telecom.
Anand had also sought investigation into the issue of allocation of spectrum in violation of licence condition from 1996 to 2008.
Earlier the Delhi High Court had directed Anand to approach the apex court observing that if the high court decided to monitor the issue raised by him, it would result in an overlapping of jurisdiction, since the Supreme Court is already monitoring the 2G spectrum scam.