‘Misconceived’: SC Registry returns Centre’s ‘clarification’ plea on spectrum allocation via non-auction routes | India News
The Supreme Court Registry has refused to receive the Centre’s “application seeking clarification” of the February 2012 judgement in the 2G case in which the top court had directed that spectrum allocation should be done through auctions. The Centre’s plea had sought the allocation of spectrum through other administrative processes as well.
The SC Registry, however, is learnt to have returned the plea, terming it misconceived and an attempt to seek a review of the judgement in the guise of asking for clarification. The Registry said this in its note while declining to take up the plea.
Noting that the government had withdrawn a review petition against the judgement in May 2012, the Registry said it is once again trying to get the matter with similar prayers heard after a long delay.
Sources said the Centre still has an option to appeal against the refusal under the SC Rules of 2013, which say: “The Registrar may refuse to receive a petition on the ground that it discloses no reasonable cause or is frivolous or contains scandalous matter, but the petitioner may within fifteen days of the making of such order, appeal by way of motion, from such refusal to the Court”.
The Centre’s plea, moved last week, had said that the Department of Telecommunications has been assigning mobile access spectrum through regular spectrum auctions, in line with the 2012 judgement.
But it said that the “assignment of spectrum is required not only for commercial telecommunication services, but also for non-commercial use for the discharge of sovereign and public interest functions such as security, safety, disaster preparedness, etc.”
The plea added: “There are also specific sui generis categories of usage, including commercial use of spectrum where, technical and
economic conditions of the use affect the feasibility of auction as a means of assignment of spectrum and thus auction as the exclusive mode may present some issues in the relevant assignment.”
The government said there is an urgent requirement for the SC “to clarify that in the situations specified… and other similar circumstances, the assignment of spectrum through administrative process may be undertaken if so determined through due process in accordance with law, if such assignment is in pursuit of governmental functions, or public interest so requires, or auction may not be preferred due to technical or economic reasons”.
The SC had in February 2012 quashed the 2G licences granted to different companies by the then UPA government.
The Centre said that the SC while answering a presidential reference in September 2012 had said that the use of the term ‘perhaps’ in the February judgement “suggests that the recommendation of auction for alienation of natural resources was never intended to be taken as an absolute or blanket statement applicable across all natural resources, but simply a conclusion made at first blush over the attractiveness of a method like auction ni disposal of natural resources. The choice of the word ‘perhaps’ suggests that the learned Judges considered situations requiring a method other than auction as conceivable and desirable”.
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First uploaded on: 01-05-2024 at 22:47 IST
