By IANS,
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Wednesday sought a response from Unitech Wireless on a plea filed by its joint venture partner in India, Telenor, that challenged the order of the Company Law Board (CLB) over their disputes.
The CLB directed both the companies to settle their differences over control and transfer of their assets through arbitration.
Justice Manmohan Singh directed Unitech Wireless to file a short affidavit within three weeks on the “maintainability” of the plea and posted the matter for July 18, the next date of hearing.
“File a short affidavit on the maintainability within three weeks,” the court said.
The court’s order came on a plea filed by Norwegian telecom company Telenor challenging the April 12 order of the CLB.
Telenor’s petition sought the quashing of the order of the CLB and asked the court “to issue an appropriate writ directing the CLB to adjudicate on the matter in a time-bound manner….”
Senior counsel Rakesh Tiku, appearing for Telenor, said that his client was incurring an expenditure of around Rs.500 crore per month for India operation, apart from the Rs.15,000 crore it had already invested in the joint venture company.
The Norwegian company holds 67.25 stake in the joint venture company.
The dispute between the two companies escalated after the Supreme Court in February scrapped 122 2G licences allotted during the tenure of former telecom minister A. Raja. The quashed licences include the 22 allotted to Uninor.