By IANS,
New Delhi : Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy Tuesday told the Supreme Court that auction was the only method of transparent allocation of natural resources for private commercial exploitation and a government panel also favoured it.
“If the natural resources have to be allocated in a non-arbitrary, non-unreasonable, non-malafide and non-opaque manner… then auction is the only method to do it,” Swamy told the apex court constitution bench hearing the presidential reference.
The apex court constitution bench comprising Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice D.K. Jain, Justice J.S. Khehar, Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Ranjan Gogoi is hearing a presidential reference on whether auction was the only method of allocating the resources, as held by the court in its 2G verdict in February.
Swamy told the court that well before the apex court delivered the verdict, quashing the 122 2G licences allocated by former telecom minister A. Raja and holding that auction was the only method of allocating natural resources, the government’s committee on allocation of natural resources recommended that auction was the only method for giving away the natural resources.