Judge GS Singhvi defends order scrapping 122 licences

NEW DELHI: Justice GS Singhvi, one of the two Supreme Court (SC) judges who scrapped 122 licences awarded under former telecom minister A Raja on the grounds that they were “arbitrary and unconstitutional”, defended the 2012 judgement. Raja was acquitted by a special court of all criminal charges after a 7-year trial on Thursday.

The second SC justice, Asok Kumar Ganguly, said, “No comments,” over the phone from Bhopal. Singhvi said the issues before the top court and the special judge were “completely different”.

“The issue before the Supreme Court was a very fundamental principle — whether natural resources could be allocated in an arbitrary manner, whether spectrum could have been allocated without auction,” he said. “We said that it was impermissible.”He explained that the top court had left it to special court judge OP Saini to examine whether there was any conspiracy or corruption in the allocation of spectrum.


“That issue was not before us. It was for the CBI court to decide,” Singhvi said. He pointed out that the government said it got Rs 65,000 crore from the auction of spectrum that was freed up by the licences that were cancelled. “Now, it is being said that there is no loss of revenue.

Who did this? It is for the people to decide,” Singhvi said. The two top court judges had held that auction of scarce natural resources was the only fair and transparent method of allocating them, prompting the then UPA government to seek a reference whether auction was mandatory.

A bench headed by the then chief justice of India subsequently clarified that the auction route, though preferable, was not mandatory. The government at the time had said auctions would lead to costs escalating.