Supreme Court's verdicts on 2G scam

Highlights of Supreme Court's three verdicts on different aspects of the telecom scam delivered by Justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly, who retires today.

122 mobile network licences issued after January 10, 2008 have been cancelled by the Supreme Court. The companies affected include some of the country's biggest telecom players.  Licenses had been issued by A Raja during his infamous tenure as Telecom Minister.  Their allocation has been described as "unconstitutional and arbitrary" by Supreme Court today.  Licenses will have to re-allocated along with an auction of spectrum.  Analysts say that this is likely to make cell phone services more expensive.

Supreme Court says that whether P Chidambaram's role should be investigated by the CBI  will be decided by Judge OP Saini who is handling the telecom scam. Supreme Court says he must deliver his verdict within two weeks.  Judge Saini is expected to decide separately on Saturday whether Mr Chidambaram should be made a co-accused in the telecom scam because he was Finance Minister when Mr Raja engineered the swindle.  The verdicts on Mr Chidambaram  are linked to petitions filed by Subramanian Swamy, who is the Janata Party President.

The Supreme Court has rejected another petition by lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan who had asked for a Special Investigation Team to monitor CBI's inquiry.  Mr Bhushan had said the CBI's inquiry in the telecom scam was being influenced by the government which wants to protect Mr Chidambram and others.  The Supreme Court wants the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to supervise the CBI's reports on its inquiry.

India's regulatory body for telecom, TRAI, has to recommend a new process for assigning 2G licenses and for auctioning spectrum. The centre will have to consider this report within one month of its submission by TRAI.

Six telecom firms have been fined  -three of them (Etisalat, Uninor and TATA)  have been penalized five crores each .  Loop and Essar have been fined 50 lakhs each.

Cancellation of licenses will be used by opposition to target the government.  Cabinet should take collective responsibility, the opposition will charge. BJP's Balbir Punj said Chidambaram should resign and can return to cabinet if the trial court finds no need for his role to be studied.

Cancellation of licenses helps old players like Bharti-Airtel whose stock shot up after the Supreme Court's verdict this morning.

TRAI chairman JS Sarma to NDTV:  As far as the cancelled 2G licences are concerned, together they hold less than 5% of the total base.  He said that customers can port or transfer to cellphone companies not affected by today's order.   "We will have to issue necessary directives for the company to inform their customers (about cancelled licenses)," he said.  Mr Sarma said that TRAI will have to figure out how to help customers port to a new company if they signed up with their current company within the last 90 days.  Currently, customers cannot switch operators in less than 90 days.