Decision on licence cancellation likely in a month

The government is expected to take a decision on cancelling licences of telecom operators who failed to meet the eligibility criteria in about a month, a top government official said today.

"We have received clarification from the Corporate Affairs Ministry on date of reckoning for compliance of various conditions, whether it be change in memorandum of association or equity-based," DoT Secretary R Chandrasekhar told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham event here.

"But before taking a final decision, we have to take legal opinion as well. The whole process should take a month or so," he added.

The Telecom Ministry has issued notices to firms on two issues -- ineligibility for acquiring licences and missing roll-out obligations within the stipulated time.

"We have received responses of all the companies. We are scrutinising it and will take this up in the next Telecom Commission meeting," Chandrasekhar said.

He added that the responses to show cause notices for not meeting the roll-out obligations have also started coming in.

Former Telecom Minister A Raja is facing charges for having issued 122 licences in 2008 without auctioning the scarce resource spectrum, which caused a presumptive loss of up to Rs 1.76 lakh crore as per government auditor CAG.

The matter is being examined by various investigating agencies and also a parliamentary panel. Raja and several government as well as telco officials have been arrested in the case.

Notices have been issued to Swan Telecom (now Etisalat DB), Datacom (now Videocon Telecom), S Tel, Uninor and others, either due to ineligibility or missing roll-out obligations.