The government has approached the Supreme Court to put a stay on the Tripura High Court?s decision of allowing telecom operators to bid for lower quantity of spectrum than notified in the Notice Inviting Application (NIA) for the March 2015 auctions.
Recently, the Tripura High Court, on a petition filed by Bharti Airtel and Reliance Telecom, decided to allow the two operators to bid only for the spectrum they currently use, i.e. 4.4 MHz each in the Northeast circle. However, according to the NIA, the operators are required to bid for a minimum of 5 MHz of spectrum in a particular service area. The operators had argued that as only a total of 8.8 MHz of spectrum has been put up for sale in the circle; bidding for minimum 5 MHz spectrum would lead to wastage of the remaining spectrum.
However, the government has asked the Supreme Court to put a stay the high court?s judgement urgently so that the timeline of the forthcoming auctions is not affected. The spectrum auctions are scheduled to start on March 4, 2015.
