Supreme Court scrapped 122 telecom licences

Supreme Court on Thursday scrapped 122 telecom licences that were awarded in a 2008 government auction at the centre of a major corruption scandal.

"Licences after January 2008 are quashed," Justice G.S. Singhvi told the court in Delhi. "The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will make fresh allocations."

 Supreme Court has left it to the trial court to decide on the demand for investigation of the alleged role of Home Min P Chidambaram into the 2G spectrum allocation scam but refused to give direction to CBI on the issue.

Disposing of the petitions filed by Subramainan Swamy seeking a direction to the CBI to probe the alleged role of Chidambaram, a bench comprising justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly on Thursday said that its order should no way influence the proceedings before the trial court.

The apex court said that the trial court should decide the matter within two weeks. Special CBI Judge O P Saini, who is hearing a separate petition of Swamy to prosecute Chidambaram, has already reserved his order for 4^th February.

Swamy had contended that Chidambaram as finance minister had a role in fixation of prices of the licenses and in the dilution of shares by the telecom firms to two foreign companies.

Among the 122 licences issued by Raja in January 2008 on first-come first-serve basis, Uninor was alloted 22 pan India licences, Loop 21, Sistema-Shyam 21, Etisalat-DB 15, S Tel 6, Videocon 21, Idea 9 and Tatas 3.

Reacting to the Supreme Court judgement Uninor, which has launched services in most of the circles, expressed shock and said that the company has been treated unfairly.

Other new operators said that they would examine the order before commenting on the future course of action.