C Sivasankaran-promoted telecom service provider S Tel on Wednesday came under fire from the Supreme Court for reaching an understanding with the department of telecommunications in the alleged spectrum scam where telecom minister A Raja had arbitrarily advanced the cut-off date for granting new licences in September 2007.
The Supreme Court pulled up the company for directly writing to DoT when the matter is pending before it.
?Why should you address a letter to the government, when we are hearing the matter? ?What about the (Delhi) High Court order? Put it in an affidavit. We deeply regret it,? the bech headed by B Sudershan Reddy told the S Tel counsel.
While adjourning the matter for Friday for further direction, the bench directed S Tel?s lawyer Dayan Krishnan to file the affidavit by Thursday evening.
S Tel is in the news from last week when DoT asked it to suspend operations in three circles?Bihar, Orissa and Himachal Pradesh?on national security grounds. Observers saw the move as an arm-twisting measure by DoT as the company had taken the department to court for arbitrarily advancing the cut-off date. This led to the company not getting licences for 16 circles.
In fact, the Delhi High Court has already struck the DoT?s move as illegal and the matter is in the Supreme Court on an appeal. Curiously, S Tel, in a communication to DoT, on Tuesday watered down its stand on the matter by stating that it has come to know that its application for licences in 16 circles has not been rejected but kept in abeyance. Interestingly, this line of argument was put forward by DoT in the High Court as well as the Supreme Court.
Attorney-General GE Vahanvati and counsel Sanjay Hegde apprised the bench of the subsequent developments, stating that S Tel has written to the DoT secretary and accepted its submissions before the court that their pending applications for the remaining licences have not been rejected but kept in abeyance.
?In these circumstances, we acknowledge the fact that our application has not been rejected and are now agreeable to the government considering our applications at the appropriate time. We acknowledge the fact that the decision of the government for giving UASL (unified access service licence) to those who applied up to September 25, 2007 was not arbitrary but based on likely availability of spectrum and administrative decision thereon,?? Vahanvati said reading S Tel?s communication.
Interestingly, former Union minister Subramaniam Swamy, who has filed an intervention application in the matter, on Wednesday submitted that he should be heard as the matter pertained to public interest. ?Hundreds of crores of rupees worth spectrum has been allotted and the CBI is probing the matter,? he said.