In a big relief to Mukesh Ambani’s yet-to-be-launched telecom business, the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a public interest litigation challenging the Centre’s decision to allow Reliance Jio to also start offering voice telephony after paying a migration fee.
The PIL was filed by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation alleging that the Telecom Department had shown favour to Reliance Jio leading to a loss of over ₹22,000 crore.
The case relates to a February 2013 decision of the Department of Telecom that permitted Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with broadband spectrum to start offering voice telephony services by paying an additional ₹1,658 crore.
Reliance Jio had acquired broadband spectrum in 2010 under an ISP licence, but then used the new policy to migrate to a unified licence (UL) in a bid to offer both voice and data services.
CAG report The PIL was filed after the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) observed that had the DoT made it clear that voice service was permitted in 2010 itself, there would have been more demand for spectrum during the auctions held then.
Broadband spectrum had been sold at a fraction of the price of 3G spectrum
However, in its 55-page order, the Supreme Court Bench said, “We may observe at the outset that the policy decision to allow such a migration was for all those who were holding broadband spectrum and this decision was not taken only for respondent No 2 individually (Reliance Jio). Everyone holding broadband spectrum became entitled to migrate to unified licence and, therefore, there is no discrimination on the part of the government authorities nor it aims at undue favouritism to respondent No 2.”
The court said that since the DoT had delinked spectrum from licence, the scope of what an operator could do was only dependant on the type of licence it had.
“Reliance Jio has paid spectrum price of ₹12,847.77 crore and also ₹1,658 crore for migration to UL, in addition to entry fee of ₹15 crore. It, therefore, cannot be said that the fee of ₹1,658 crore charged from respondent no.2 is in any way less or that it has caused any wrongful loss to the government,” it said.
The court also picked holes in the CAG’s report by saying that the basic error committed by the CAG was to compare the price of 3G with broadband spectrum.