New Delhi:
The Supreme Court has extended the deadline for auction and issue of new licenses for the 2G spectrum till August 31, 2012 in lieu of the 122 telecom licenses cancelled. The cancelled licenses, however, will stay in operation till September 7, 2012 for a smooth transition and to avoid any inconvenience for the customers of the telecom companies.
The Supreme Court today also rejected the Centre's plea for allowing 400 days to complete the auction.
The Supreme Court said, "the entire exercise would have been avoided if little effort was made earlier. A fact has been brought to our notice that 7800 crores were lost on each license."
"We are still not in position to believe that officers of the DoT (Department of Telecommunications) are so naive that they overlooked all this. So we are not in a position to accept 400 days of extension," the court added.
Telecom regulator - Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) - had proposed a steep base price for auctioning of the spectrum. The court had asked the regulator to come up with recommendations on the auction by June. TRAI said the high pricing is justified because this spectrum can be used for services like 2G, 3G, etc. Prices of telecom stocks today fell for a second straight day due to these recommendations.
The Attorney General (AG), appearing for the DoT, said that the new TRAI recommendations have come only yesterday and this have an impact on the auction and hence, it wanted time.
The Supreme Court in February this year had cancelled 122 licenses issued by former Telecom Minister A Raja in 2008. The court had said using a first-come-first-serve policy to allocate national resources like airwaves is "fundamentally flawed", dangerous, and designed to benefit any one "with access to power corridors."
According to the court order in February, these licenses were to be reallocated in four months via an auction based on market prices.