TDSAT to hear Reliance Info on Feb 8

Reliance Infocomm on Thursday got a temporary relief from paying Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion) penalty imposed by the government on charges of illegal routing of international calls, with the telecom dispute appellate tribunal TDSAT directing that there should be no recovery of penalty till the next date of hearing, February 8.

Although no order was passed by the TDSAT to stay the payment of penalty, it asked the department of telecom not to take 'precipitated' action on the recovery of the penalty till further hearing.

Reliance Infocomm had moved TDSAT earlier this week challenging the penalty imposed on it by DoT.

Harish Salve, appearing for Infocomm, later told reporters that TDSAT's directive was virtually staying the DoT's order.

Reliance Info moves TDSAT against DoT

C A Sunderam, DoT's counsel, however, said that "the order stands and it has not been stayed. Till the next date of hearing, we will just wait and see."

Meanwhile, TDSAT chairman D P Wadhwa asked DoT to file a reply on Reliance Infocomm's petition within next ten days and fixed February 8 as the next date of hearing.

Stating that it was a dispute between licensee (Reliance Infocomm) and licensor (DoT), Salve said that the government cannot impose a penalty unilaterally. "There is no finding by any independent authority that Reliance has breached the terms and conditions of licence."

Reliance said the allegations of Caller Line Identification tampering was a "non-issue" as it has happened with the public sector undertakings BSNL and MTNL and the proof of this has been provided by the company.

On the other hand, DoT contested Reliance's argument saying that tampering the CLI "was a serious fraud" and should not be ignored.

Reliance counsel Salve pointed out that ultimately it was an issue of recovering the levy from Reliance Infocomm, which has been paid by the company to the two PSUs many times more than actually it should be.

"Reliance has paid about Rs 244 crore (Rs 2.44 billion) to two PSUs against an estimated calculation of just Rs 38 crore (Rs 380 million)," Salve said.

The private operator, in its petition, had said that "pending the hearing and disposal of the present petition, TDSAT should stay the enforcement of the DoT order of December 23, 2004, and January 17, 2005, by which a penalty of Rs 150 crore has been imposed."