All penalty issues should be referred to Trai: Sibal

Not just Sibal, even TRAI chairman Rahul Khullar, at a public forum on Friday, said that imposition of Rs 50-crore penalty per service area is 'absurd'

Communications and information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, on Friday, said all penalty issues should be referred to the sector regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as the amount in question is not justified in most of the cases.

“Penalty is not a source of revenue for the government. The Rs 50-crore penalty is not justified. The government does not make money. But imposition of penalty just helps the lawyers to make money,” Sibal, who is also the law minister, said at a public forum on Friday.

Not just Sibal, even Trai chairman Rahul Khullar had said the imposition of the Rs 50-crore penalty per service area was “absurd”.  

Sibal and Khullar were speaking at a telecom summit, organised jointly by the Confederation of India Indistry (CII) and the Department of telecommunications, here on Friday. However, the minister and the regulator spoke in two different sessions.

“For the last two-and-a-half years, I have been telling my department what are you doing, but nobody listens. So what do you do? The problem with me is the following. If the files comes... (for) a penalty of Rs 50 crore... Even I can’t afford to do anything,” Sibal said, adding the system ‘needs to change’.

Telecom operators are currently sitting on a penalty burden of Rs 7,000 crore. Of this, telcos have received penalty notices of Rs 1,200 crore for the 3G intra-circle roaming issue, and about Rs 750 crore for the violation of the subscriber local dialing norms.

Further, both Sibal and telecom secretary M F Farooqui, who was also present at the CII summit, believe the telecom industry is over-regulated. “We need to give the industry scope to shape up. We start regulating the industry before it gets a shape. The government needs to take tough decisions to make the path for future growth of the industry,” Sibal said.

However, Sibal did not forget the fact that the general election, which would decide the fate of his political party, is approaching.

On one hand, he spoke in support of the industry, and on the other, he stressed the government was actually trying to establish a proper backbone for the digitally converged India. “We need to empower the rural mass with proper broadband and communication technologies,” he said, keeping in mind his department’s agenda for ‘digital convergence’. “With 100 per cent foreign direct investment in telecom, we will see funds flowing in. We’ll get very strong players in very deep pockets,” added the minister.

Akash 4 by January
The government has also finalised specifications of the next version of low-cost tablet Aakash which would be ready by January 2014, Sibal said on Friday. “Yesterday, we had a meeting on the Aakash. The generation 4 Aakash is ready, all the specifications are frozen,” said the minister. About 12 manufacturers from around the world are ready to make the tablet in India, he added. “There is no problem in terms of manufacture. In fact, lines are ready for manufacture, what they need is orders. Now that specifications are frozen, we hope the Aakash would be available to the people of India by January 2014,” said Sibal.

However, the government is yet to finalise the price of the new device. It had sourced the previous version of the Aakash tablet for $49.98 (Rs 2,276).