Doubts on 2G auction may hit FDI, SC told
In a bid to convince the Supreme Court to admit the presidential reference on the 2G case judgment cancelling spectrum licences, the government on Thursday told the top court that if the “doubts” arising out of it on the issue of auction are not cleared, it would lead to serious impact on foreign direct investment in India.
Articulating the government’s stand on the issue, attorney-general G.E. Vahanvati told a Constitution bench that despite Centre “accepting” the February 2 judgment regarding cancellation and re-auction of 2G licences, the government has “serious doubts” about the direction making it “duty bound” to follow auction route in allocation of all natural resource.
“Cancellation of the licences on the premise that the procedure followed is wrong will affect FDI. We accept all the suggestions (in judgment) about transparency, fair method of selection (of private allottees of resources), non-discrimination and publicity (of allocation procedure), the only problem is on the direction that the government is ‘duty bound’ to auction all natural resources,” the AG submitted before a bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices D.K. Jain, J.S. Khehar, Dipak Misra and Ranjan Gogoi.
The government brought in the issue of FDI a day after former attorney-general Soli Sorabjee, appearing for petitioner NGO, CPIL, and its counsel Prashant Bhushan had argued that the “correctness” of a judgment could not be the subject matter of the presidential reference. Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy had gone a step further to raise apprehensions that any opinion given by the SC on the auction issue at this stage, would created “impediments” in trial in the 2G scam against former communications minister A. Raja and others.
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EGoM likely to meet again next week: Sibal
AGE CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, July 12
Communications minister Kapil Sibal, who is also a member of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Telecom, told reporters after the meeting that “we are moving as quickly as we can and we want to go to Supreme Court to demonstrate to them that as far as we are concerned we are ready with everything and some timeline that we have indicated in our meeting will be met.”
Mr Sibal said that government would try its best to adhere to timeline given by the top court. “We will try to stick to the deadline of August 31. But we will inform Supreme Court about all what we have done. We had some discussion on the timeline. We have decided some parameters, which we will fulfil before we move to Supreme Court,” he added.
“As far as mortgage of spectrum is concerned, in the event there is default and the spectrum is mortgaged with the bank... It’s the bank that will take care of auction. The architecture of auction will be discussed in consultation with DoT,” Mr Sibal, said adding the panel may meet again on Monday or Tuesday.
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