Spice withdraws suit for pan-India GSM licence

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Spice Communications, in which Aditya Birla group firm Idea Cellular bought 40.8 per cent stake, on Thursday withdrew its petition filed against Department of Telecom before sectoral tribunal TDSAT, challenging its rejection for pan-India GSM licence.

During the proceedings of the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, counsels appearing for Spice submitted their request to withdraw the suit.

Spice counsel's submitted before the tribunal that on the instructions from the company they want to withdraw the suit filed against the DoT.

After observing that there was no opposition from the government's side, TDSAT Chairman Justice Arun Kumar granted the permission to withdraw the suit and dismissed it. Spice had challenged its rejection for licence by the DoT for 16 telecom circles.

The telecom firm, which has operations in Punjab and Karnataka, has been given licence for Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Maharashtra.

DoT has rejected Spice's application after finding that it did not fit the net worth criteria for a pan-India licence.

Spice had claimed a net worth of Rs 1,254 crore in its application submitted in 2006. The company had included the networth of its stakeholders Modi Wellvest, Super Infosys and TMI (Indian arm of Telekom Malaysia).

However, the government found that Spice Communications, which had run into significant losses, had not taken into account the debit balance of profit and loss accountnegative free reserves.