Indian court cancels 122 telecom licenses

Indian court cancels 122 telecom licenses

2012-02-04 07:58:07 GMT+7 (ICT)

NEW DELHI (BNO NEWS) -- India's Supreme Court on Thursday cancelled 122 telecommunications licenses which were issued to mobile phone companies after 2008, local media reported on Friday.

The licenses, which were granted by former Telecommunications Minister Andimuthu Raja, were cancelled on the ground that they were issued in a "totally arbitrary and unconstitutional" manner, the Times of India reported
. Raja is currently in jail on corruption charges.

Judges G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly said the country's telecom regulator will make recommendations for a fresh auction within four months. The order came after a petition was filed alleging scam in the allocation of spectrum licenses by Raja in 2008, which cost the government an estimated loss of up to $40 billion.

Licenses held by five companies, including the local joint ventures of Norway's Telenor and Abu Dhabi's Etisalat, were cancelled in the verdict. Uninor, a joint venture between Unitech and Telenor, expressed shock and claimed the company has been treated unfairly.



"We have been unfairly treated as we simply followed the government process we were asked to. We are shocked to see that Uninor is being penalized for faults the court has found in the government process," the company said in a statement.

 Noting that the order has not stopped the company's operations for now, Uninor said "we expect the authorities to ensure that our 36 million customers, 17,500 workforce and 22,000 partners are not unjustly affected."

The order will only affect five percent of the country's mobile phone users. The 2G mobile licenses scandal is the biggest of several corruptions cases that have emerged during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's second term.

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