New Delhi: The government should re-auction 2G spectrum after the Supreme Court issued notice to the union government and 11 firms in the alleged scam in the allocation of airwaves, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy asserted on Monday. He also wanted Communications Minister Kapil Sibal to be "restrained from dealing with the matter".
"The whole 2G spectrum should be auctioned again as the licenses which were issued earlier are illegal," Swamy told reporters outside the Supreme Court.
"It is quite clear that if the license is cancelled, the money has to be returned because it is ill-gotten money...and that is causing panic," he said.
An apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K. Ganguly issued notice to 11 companies that allegedly did not fulfil their roll-out obligations as per the terms and conditions of being issued spectrum.
The notice was issued on a plea seeking cancellation of airwaves and licenses issued for telecom services during former communications minister A. Raja's tenure.
Swamy also told reporters that an interlocutory application had been filed by him that present Sibal 'should be restrained from dealing with the matter anymore'.
Swamy claimed Sibal is 'functioning in a way to protect those who got license in (an) illegal way'.
Sibal has disputed the Controller and Auditor General's presumptive loss estimate in the allocation of 2G spectrum. He said on Friday that the methodology used was 'utterly erroneous' in pegging Rs.1.76 lakh crore ($40 billion) as the notional loss while awarding airwaves for 2G phone services in 2008.