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Supreme Court cancels all 2G licences during
Raja's tenure
Thursday February 02, 2012 12:00:07 PM,
IANS
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New Delhi:
The Supreme Court Thursday cancelled all 122 licences granted to
telecom firms during the tenure of former communications minister
A. Raja and left it to the trial court to judge if Home Minister
P. Chidambaram needed to be tried.
The apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K.
Ganguly said but for the initiative of enlightened citizens
looking for clean governance, unsuspecting citizens would not have
known the misuse and arbitrary manner in which second-generation
(2G) telecom licences were granted.
The court said the companies whose licences stand to be cancelled
will continue to offer their services for four months during which
time the telecom regulator will look into the matter and make
recommendations for the fresh auction.
The court, taking note of the arbitrary manner in which licences
were granted, slapped a cost of Rs.5 crore each on Unitech, Swan
Telecom and Tata Teleservices and said half of that will go to the
court's legal aid services and the remaining to defence services.
Varying costs have been imposed on other companies also.
The verdict came on a plea by Janta Party president Subramanian
Swamy's plea seeking an investigation into the alleged role of
Chidambaram, who was finance minister when these 122 licences were
issued to these companies.
Lawyer Prashant Bhushan had also filed a petition seeking
cancellation of licences.
The two-member bench said the trial court of the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) can determine if Chidambaram needed to be
investigated, but declined another plea to form a special
investigative team for that.
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