Telecom Ministry to seek Law Ministry's view in TTSL-Idea issue
The markets now seem to sense the return of “Risk on Trade” as money returns to riskier asset classes with emerging markets set to be key gainers.
Telecom Ministry will seek an opinion from the Law Ministry on the alleged violation of licence conditions by Tata Group after it gets a report from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).
"Ministry of Law is to be consulted after the comments are received from MCA," sources in the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said.
The Corporate Affairs Ministry, which is examining allegations made by Aditya Birla Nuvo against Tata Group is likely to submit its comments to DoT soon.
When asked for a comment on the matter, a Tata Group spokesperson said, "We are in no position to comment on whether or not any department of the Government is enquiring into any matter. Suffice it to say that we have not received any enquiry from any Department of the Government."
DoT had sought information regarding shareholding pattern of Tata Industries in Tata Teleservices (TTSL) and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra (TTML) in 2005-2006 from MCA.
Sources said the Corporate Affairs Ministry is in the process of compiling information through registrar of companies (RoC) but this is a time consuming process and the Ministry can only send its comments after examining the information received from RoCs.
Kumar Mangalam Birla-owned Aditya Birla Nuvo had written to DoT about Tata Industries holding more than 10 per cent indirect equity in two licence companies (TTSL and TTML) for the same service area in violence of the licence conditions.
The dispute between the two groups started after Tatas, who were joint venture partners in Aditya Birla group-led Idea Cellular, started their CDMA operations.
Aditya Birla group had alleged that TTSL and TTML were offering services in some areas overlapping that of Idea Cellular.