2G resale impossible within SC deadline, DoT tells PM

The department of telecommunications (DoT) has made it clear to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that it cannot meet the four-month deadline set by the Supreme Court for the resale of 122 telecom licences cancelled by the apex court earlier this month.

The process of completing the process of bidding as mandated by the court will take over 13 months, DoT said in a presentation before the PM and senior cabinet ministers such as Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and Salman Khurshid last week.

A senior DoT official said finalising the auction process for 3G auction sales had taken almost two years to fructify; and it was too much to ask for the plans for 2G auction bidding to be finalised in 4 months.

The DoT will ask the Supreme Court to extend the deadline for finishing the auction process, as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is slated to issue its recommendations on the 2G auctions in the next 60 days.

According to an Economic Times report, the DoT says it will require 95 days to study the TRAI proposals, fix a reserve price for bandwidth in consultation with the cabinet, and get approvals from the group of ministers looking into spectrum-related issues.

After this, DoT has estimated that it will take another 245 days to complete the auction process.

The DoT presentation adds that the government must take a call on the quantum of spectrum to be sold, the size of the blocks to go under the hammer, and the entities that can participate in the bidding.