HC seeks Govt response on spectrum allocation policy

he Delhi High Court sought a response from the Centre on Wednesday on a petition challenging its first come-first serve procedure adopted in spectrum allocation. A Bench comprising Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice S Muralidhar asked the government to file its response within three weeks and posted the matter to December 10 for hearing. The petition had challenged the Centre's policy of allocating 2G spectrum and alleged it had caused a loss of crores of rupees to the exchequer. The PIL alleged that the procedure followed by the government was non-transparent, and was intended for the benefit of some private players in the telecom industry. "The telecom ministry's deliberate inaction on the recommendations of the finance ministry, Prime Minister's Office and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has benefited private parties at the expense of public exchequer," individual petitioner Arvind Gupta said. He also referred to an earlier judgement of the High Court delivered in 1993 by which the court had said that "first come first serve" policy is unreasonable and unfair. "The basis of first come-first serve for allotment of time slots on satellite channels is arbitrary. It is unreasonable, unjust and unfair," Gupta said quoting the High Court judgement. He questioned the government's intention of not following a competitive bidding procedure. "The proximity of real estate developers to corridors of the department of telecom has enabled even real estate developers to overnight turn into telecom entrepreneurs. Indian real estate developers and infrastructure promoters have also become Indian telcom players," Gupta alleged in his petition.

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