2G ruling causes waves across political, business circles

(Nvonews.com)

The landmark judgment by the Supreme Court on the 2G spectrum issue has already caused ripples across the political and business spectrum. The Union Minister for Communications Kapil Sibal sought to portray the SC verdict as a vindication for the government, saying that it exculpates the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram and the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

“The Supreme Court clearly said that the advice of then finance minister was not followed by the then minister for telecommunications and the same thing in terms of the Prime Ministers Office,” Sibal told reporters.

The opposition however saw it as an opportunity to embarrass the government, demanding Chidambaram’s resignation. “The finance minister is the custodian of the public exchequer. It is the prime responsibility of finance minister to ensure that there is no loot of public money,” Arun Jaitley told reporters in Lucknow.

“The CBI has elaborately argued for days together that the role of Chidambaram need not be investigated. Therefore, the upfront of today’s order is that his role has to be investigated,” added his colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The ruling has come at an especially critical time for the Congress, with the process of state elections under way. 3 states are scheduled to go to polls, while two Punjab and Uttrakhand have already had their elections. The Congress party’s trouble shooter in chief, Pranab Mukherjee said that the government will study the judgment and its political implications before responding.

While the government was hard at work controlling the political fallout of the verdict; TRAI said that user will not be greatly affected.

“The move is likely to affect less than 5 percent of users as the current operators other than the ones whose licenses have been cancelled control almost the rest of the market,” Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman J.S. Sarma told IANS.

Otherwise too, experts have opined that the provision to port your number to another carrier will mean that users will be able to easily carry over their numbers to others carriers not affected by the ruling.

“Basically, the time period of four months is the time for government to decide to come up with a enhanced market mechanism,” Rajan Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators Association Of India (COAI), told IANS.

Meanwhile the Supreme Court has directed the CBI to submit its report to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). The CVC would then give its reply to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover the on the matter of setting up a SIT for looking into the 2G spectrum scam, the SC  said.

Affected mobile companies have fallen on stock markets on the news, while other telecom operators have risen.

IANS inputs

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Posted by NVO1 on February 2, 2012. Filed under Business, Latest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry