Thaindian News

New Delhi, Jan 30 (IANS) The Supreme Court Monday issued notice to the centre on a plea seeking court-guided investigation by the CBI into alleged irregularities in the allocation of excess 2G spectrum to service providers thereby causing a huge loss to the public exchequer.

The apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya issued notice on the plea by petitioner lawyer Yakesh Anand to make the service providers as respondents and said that the notice was returnable in eight weeks.

The petitioner challenged the Dec 21, 2011 judgment and order of the Delhi High Court by which it had dismissed his plea.

The high court dismissed the petition on the ground that the 2G matter was presently under consideration of the apex court and even the joint parliamentary committee.

Anand submitted that in the name of the on-going trial by the CBI Special Court, other and more important and flagrant violations of the licence conditions were being concealed by the department of telecommunications.

“This was a case of distribution of scarce natural resource of spectrum to the private operators in excess of what was mandated in the licence,” the petitioner told the court.

“The excess allocation of spectrum benefited the private operators in terms of huge revenue which they were able to earn by getting the natural resource of spectrum without any price and at the cost of the national exchequer,” the petition said.