The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has received responses from all the operators who were issued show cause notices for not meeting the eligibility criteria for licences and will soon decide the course of action against them.

According to R. Chandrasekhar, secretary, DoT, ?The replies to all the earlier show cause notices for the cancellation on account of eligibility have been received. While for failure of the roll-out, operators have 60 days to respond.?

In 2010, DoT had issued 119 show cause notices to various telecom operators, of which 85 were for those ineligible to get licences.

The notices, as pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), were sent to operators for their alleged ineligibility to get licences due to misinformation furnished by them, and for their failure to roll out networks within the stipulated time frame.

The CAG had listed out licences given to new operators, including Unitech, Videocon, S-Tel, Loop and Swan. Meanwhile, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) also pointed out various lapses in licences held by these operators while recommending their cancellation.

According to the CAG, there was a revenue loss of up to Rs 1.76 trillion in awarding licences and spectrum, the value of which were fixed according to 2001 price, for pan-India operations during the tenure of former Minister of Telecommunications and IT, A. Raja.