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Hearing on PIL against new telecom policy adjourned

The Delhi high court today adjourned till Tuesday the hearing on a public interest petition challenging the validity of the National Telecom Policy 1999 which provides for switching over to a revenue-sharing system from a fixed-licence-fee regime for existing operators.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice S N Variava and Justice S K Mahajan directed the government neither to create any third-party right nor to take any irreversible step until August 3 when the petition comes up for hearing again.

Attorney General Soli Sorabjee, on behalf of the government, gave an undertaking to this effect.

Earlier, Sorabjee pleaded that since private operators were making huge losses, the whole approach to the issue should be remedial and not punitive.

Countering this contention, Indira Jaising, appearing on behalf of the petitioner, the Delhi Science Forum, argued that the operators are earning profits and some of them, including Essar and Max Touch, have floated public issues at a premium.

She observed that the government was putting a premium on defaulters by extending help where it was not deserved. "The government is giving away money to private operators, which is not in the public interest," she argued.

The petition, filed under Article 226 of the Constitution, alleges that the offer made to the existing operator-licensees to migrate to a revenue-sharing system has resulted in an approximate loss of Rs 500 billion to the public exchequer.

The Delhi Science Forum today submitted that the revenue-sharing scheme was based on the assumption that the licensees were sick and thus unable to pay their dues.

The petitioner said if some of the private operators had made losses, it was entirely due to their own mistakes. The forum added that the operators had accepted the licences with their eyes wide open. "It is in the very nature of the business that calculated risks are taken on projected demand," it added.

The forum said the government was bound by law to terminate the licence if an operator failed to clear its dues and that the government could legally offer the licences for re-auction through any public and transparent process enabling wider competition.

The switch over to the revenue-sharing system from the fixed-licence-fee regime is scheduled to take effect from August 1. Most of the operators have accepted the new system. As a quid-pro-quo the telecom operators have been asked by the government to withdraw all cases pending in courts or with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India before moving to the new arrangement.

TRAI, meanwhile, has moved the Delhi high court seeking a clear demarcation of its rights.

UNI

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