New Delhi: The Centre Tuesday decided to withdraw from the Supreme Court its plea for review of the 2G judgement, which had held that natural resources should be allotted to private companies only through "auction" and not on the basis of first-come-first-served (FCFS) policy.
A letter, circulated in this regard to the parties linked to the matter, said an application would be moved on May 10 for withdrawing the petition seeking review of the February 2 judgement, which held the FCFS policy unconstitutional, while cancelling the 122 2G licences, allotted during the tenure of former Telecom Minister A Raja.
The Centre's letter circulated to various parties said, "In view of the fact that only limited notice has been issued, the petitioners do not want to press the review petition and will be praying for withdrawal of the review petition."
The apex court on April 13 had admitted the Government's plea seeking review of its 2G ruling on a limited aspect that natural resources should be allotted to private companies only through "auction" but had refused to hear the affected telecom firms, whose petitions for reconsideration of the verdict cancelling their licences were dismissed.
A bench of justices G S Singhvi and K S Radhakrishnan had issued notices to the NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) and Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, seeking their responses on the Government's plea seeking review of the February 2 judgement by which the first-come-first-served policy was held as flawed.
In the review petition, the Centre had said it did not want to question the order on the cancellation of licenses.
After filing the review petition, the Government on April 12 had moved the Supreme Court with a Presidential Reference for its opinion on issues arising out of its 2G spectrum judgement including whether auctioning of natural resources across all sectors is mandatory and the verdict be given retrospective effect for radio waves granted since 1994.
Explaining the reason for withdrawing the review peition, a senior Telecom Ministry official later said "government has decided to withdraw the review petition in the 2G case as it has been admitted only on limited non-telecom related grounds and hence would serve no purpose as far as telecom is concerned."
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, May 08, 2012, 19:28