seeking a CBI probe into the reduction of penalty for shutting down the latter’s rural telephony services.
The PIL was filed by an NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation, led by lawyer and anti-corruption activist Prashant Bhushan. The NGO has been asked to file a fresh petition as the matter is unconnected to the 2G scam. A Bench comprising Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly said, if there is any irregularity allegedly connected whatsoever with telecom, it cannot be linked to the 2G case.
The petition alleged that Mr. Sibal had shown undue favour to Anil Ambani’s R-Comm by reducing a fine of 650 crore to five crore rupees for violating the terms of the USOF contract.USOF is a corpus created by imposing a fee on telecom companies in order to create infrastructure for providing rural telephony services. Mr. Sibal had assailed the PIL against him as malafide and motivated. He had clarified that the penalty had been imposed for a brief interruption of services. In fact, a notice had been issued to R-Comm for 50 crore rupees in penalty to pressurise it to restore services, the Minister had said.