Thursday, January 10, 2013

Curative Petition of Sistema to be heard today :ET


A four-judge bench, led by CJI Altamas Kabir along with Justice GS Singhvi, will hear on Thursday Sistema’s curative petition in chamber in the afternoon. Singhvi was part of a two-judge bench that cancelled 122 spectrum licenses issued during former Telecom Minister A Raja’s tenure over illegalities. The other judge on the bench, Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly, has since retired.
Usually a five-judge bench, comprising three senior-most top court judges and the bench which originally decided the issue, hear a curative. Justices DK Jain and P Sathasivam are the other members of the bench. A curative is usually filed after a review has been dismissed. But in this case, no review was ever pressed. The government withdrew the review to file a presidential reference.
A curative can only be filed on limited points upon the petitioner getting an opinion from a senior lawyer about a grave error in the judgement. If the four judges decide that no prima facie case is made out for hearing the case, the curative will be dismissed. But should they decide to hear it, they will also take a call on whether to hear it in open court.
If the court decides to hear the curative petition, it will issue notices to all the parties; in this case Videocon Telecommunications Ltd, Russian company Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd, Tata Teleservices Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd and the CPIL, the petitioner on whose plea the licences were cancelled and take a call.
The government is expected to back Sistema’s case as in the Lafarge case when the it cited contractual obligations with another nation, to get the court’s nod for sourcing limestone from Meghalaya for a cement project downstream in Bangladesh.
AG GE Vahanvati argued that case and got a favourable order for French company Lafarge despite local opposition to mining the hills. Sistema has warned the Indian government of international legal action if it failed to have the cancellation revoked.
Sistema’s joint venture with India’s Shyam Group, Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), had filed the curative on the ground that its mobile permits be treated differently as it was allotted CDMA airwaves, which is different from other companies who hold GSM airwaves.
The company says that it was sole applicant for CDMA spectrum and therefore cannot be clubbed with others who were allegedly involved in the 2G scam. Idea Cellular maintains that applications for its seven licences that were quashed were made in June 2006, and it therefore cannot be linked with the other companies who had applied for permits in 2007.
The situation is similar in the case of Tata Teleservices, which had also filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court, seeking reinstatement of its three quashed licences.
The company says these three permits had been applied for earlier and cannot be bundled with the quashed permits. four-judge bench, led by CJI, to hear Sistema curative tomorrow in-chamber. 

Disclaimer

A BLOG FOR ALL THE SHAREHOLDERS OF SSTL (FORMERLY SHYAMTELELINK LTD) TO COME TOGETHER AND DISCUSS ISSUES OF COMMON INTEREST. YOU CAN REACH US AT AMSOST@GMAIL.COM