SC turns down Voda, Airtel's plea on licence

The Supreme Court on Friday declined the request of Vodafone and Bharti Airtel to extend their licences along with spectrum for 10 more years.

After an hour-long hearing, the telecom giants' petitions were tagged on with another set of petitions pending before a different Bench, without fixing any date of hearing.

As the auction of the spectrum is imminent, the firms may have to participate in the auction, against their will.

At one stage of the arguments, presiding judge Anil Dave told the firms to participate in the auction as no one could claim a special right in this matter.

But the companies pleaded they should not be equated with new “predatory, fly-by-night bidders who want to gain a foothold without any experience in the field”.

The firms said they were willing to pay the auction-discovered price for the 900-Mhz spectrum. K K Venugopal, counsel for Vodafone, submitted the firm had invested Rs 59,000 crore in six circles and had 71 million subscribers.

If spectrum were to be auctioned according to the new 2012 telecom policy, it would result in grave injustice as “licence without spectrum will be only a piece of paper,” he said.

A M Singhvi, counsel for Airtel, submitted it had 213 million subscribers in 22 circles and had invested Rs 25,500 crore or Rs 255 billion.

The company was catering to the public for 20 years and if “non-serious” bidders jack up the prices in auction, the company would lose everything.

Since the company was willing to pay the auction-discovered price, the government wasn't going to gain anything by auctioning what was its spectrum for 20 years, Singhvi said.