2G auction: Centre moves Supreme Court to extend deadline
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The Union government on Thursday moved the Supreme Court to extend the timeline for the auction of 2G spectrum.
The Union Cabinet had on Tuesday set November 12 as the new date for auctioning second-generation spectrum, much later than the August 31 deadline set by the Supreme Court while cancelling the 122 2G licences.
According to the new timeline, interested parties will have to submit their bids latest by October 9, while a final list will be announced on November 6. The government expects to complete the bidding process by January 30.
Prior to the auction, a mock auction will be held on November 7-8.
The empowered group of ministers, headed by finance minister P. Chidambaram, had on Tuesday decided to push the date to November.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had set the deadline for August 31.
The Union Cabinet had last week finalized Rs 14,000 crore for 5 MHz spectrum in 1800 MHz band and Rs 18,200 crore for 5 MHz spectrum in 800 MHz band as the base price.
As many as 122 licenses were cancelled earlier this year by the Supreme Court, which ordered that spectrum or the airwaves used for mobile networks should be auctioned. The licenses that were revoked had been granted in 2008 by then telecom minister A. Raja, who was jailed for corruption and conspiracy. He was meant to follow a first-come-first-serve policy; the CBI says he accepted kickbacks to help companies jump to the top of a long queue.
The Supreme Court had ordered that the auction of the spectrum must be completed by August 31, and that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or TRAI, should form the guidelines. TRAI shocked the industry by recommending that the reserve price be at Rs 18,000 crores, 10 times that of 2008. Telecom companies said the new prices would force consumers to pay much for cellphones tariffs.