New Delhi, Sept 25: In a major relief to all telecom majors, the Supreme Court today in an interim order restrained all states from using coercive methods like attaching assets to recover Sales Tax on the service provided by these firms including Bharat Snachar Nigam Ltd (BSNL). Referring to a larger bench the question whether the states were empowered to ask for sales tax on service provided by these companies when they pay service tax to the Centre, a bench comprising Justice S Rajendra Babu and Justice A R Lakshmanan stayed any coercive action to be taken by the state governments in this regard. However, the bench said that the states were entitled to recover the tax from these companies, which included reliance, Tata, Bharti, Escotel and other telecom service providers, if the assessment has been completed by the authorities. All the companies had challenged the recovery of Sales Tax from them by the state government and the coercive methods adopted by them on the ground that they were already paying a substantial service tax to the central government and whether providing of telecom services amounted to sales. Bureau Report