Last week, while officially telling telecom operators the details of the new package, telecom secretary Anil Kumar said the package was contingent on them withdrawing all cases filed by them in various courts.

Apart from the cases against DoT on their specific licenses, one of the cases pertains to the jurisdiction of the TRAI. While Kumar said that this case would also have to be withdrawn, the operators were reluctant to do so, and pointed out that this case did not relate to license matters and so could not be linkedto the overall telecom package cleared by the Cabinet last fortnight.

In March last year, the TRAI had stalled MTNL's cellular foray on the grounds that its licence for these services was not valid. The DoT, indignant with this judgment, had taken the matter to the Delhi high court.

In July, a single judge had given a ruling upholding MTNL's licence and declared TRAI had no jurisdiction over licensing issues. Soon after this, the cellular operators went in for an appeal and the case is still pending with the high court. This is the case that the government now wants them to withdraw.

The operators fear that if they take back this case, then DoT or MTNL would be able to walk all over them -- in essence, if they withdraw the case, this would imply that they are going along with the government's view that the TRAI has no jurisdiction in matters pertaining to license issues.

Interestingly, the operators are also challenging the definition of the term `outstandings' as it includes interest charges ofaround Rs 280 crore for the period of six months that the effective date of licences have been changed - operators have been asked to clear all outstanding dues if they wish to move to the new package.

"This would imply that for the period that I am being excused from paying licence fee itself, I have to pay interest charges thereon," explains an agitated cellular operator.

The explanation given by the DoT on these issues is that the Cabinet decision mentioned all of these points and therefore these would have been complied with in totality. Operators, however, have written to the government saying that the DoT's note prepared for the Cabinet did not contain these details of the break-up of the outstandings and now holding this up for the industry.