By IANS,
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Wednesday declined to hear a new petition alleging violation of licence conditions in allocation of 2G spectrum by the communications ministry, saying that the issue was being monitored by the Supreme Court.
The division bench of Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said that for it to hear the matter, being monitored by the apex court, would amount to overlapping of jurisdiction.
The court gave petitioner Yakesh Anand, a Supreme Court advocate, the liberty to withdraw the present petition and file the matter before the apex court.
Anand in his petition alleged that the department of telecommunications (DoT) distributed excess amount of “precious and scarce national resource of spectrum” to private telecom operators, without charging any additional fee.
The petitioner sought the court’s direction to investigate the notional loss to the exchequer on account of spectrum allocation as reported by the Comptroller and Auditor General in its report.
Anand also alleged that the excess spectrum was distributed without any criteria, guidelines and in violation of the licence conditions.
He alleged the DoT did not probe how excess spectrum was allocated to the private telecom service providers, including Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone Essar, Aircel and Spice Telecom.