SC admits Infocomm plea against TDSAT

The Supreme Court today admitted of Reliance Infocomm's appeal against the March 4 order of TDSAT upholding the penalty of Rs 150 crore imposed on it by the department of telecom for international call re-routing.

While the TDSAT order had described the practice as "unscrupulous", the private telecom giant headed by Anil Ambani has contended that call re-routing was a world-wide phenomenon. Even public sector enterprises like MTNL and BSNL indulge in it, according to the appeal.

The bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhan also issued notice to the Centre after hearing senior counsel Harish Salve who submitted that the case 'bristled with legal questions'. When DoT imposed the penalty, the company challenged it before TDSAT.

It dismissed the petition with strong remarks against the company. It paid the amount under protest and has now challenged the order in the Supreme Court.

"The method Reliance Infocomm employed to camouflage an international call was certainly unprincipled and if we may say so unscrupulous," the TDSAT had said in the order while imposing cost of Rs 25,000 on it.

It also ruled that the practice was 'in total breach of the licence conditions'. Infocomm maintains that there was no violation of any law and what it adopted was a technical procedure resorted to by all service providers in the world.

However, the government says that the company had tampered with the caller line identification which could lead to security threats. The company was doing it to avoid payments to MTNL and BSNL on account of "access deficit charge".

These two companies had raised a demand of over Rs 550 crore on Infocomm.