Putting up a defiant face to the Supreme Court's indictment of its spectrum sale policy, the government passed the blame on the previous NDA regime for putting in place a ''faulty policy'' on allocating spectrum which his government then merely followed.
Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said the Supreme Court has criticised the first-come-first-serve policy. “This was set by the NDA. Its Cabinet passed it on October 31, 2003. We followed it. The court found the policy discriminatory, not the fact that we followed it,” Sibal said.
Sibal also said the government has learnt a lesson from the verdict -- “ministers must consult all on policies and not commit irregularities”.
He ducked a question on why the UPA government should blindly follow procedures put in place many years ago. He was asked why the UPA thought that the NDA policy was "cast in stone".
Sibal was also flustered when asked why licences granted by NDA telecom ministers were not cancelled if the Supreme Court only found the policy faulty, and not its implementation. "At that point of time, we thought the first-come-first-serve policy was okay. Now we shall reconsider," Sibal said.
Nearly four hours after the Supreme Court's verdict to revoke 122 telecom licences given by A Raja, Kapil Sibal said the judgement had ended the two years of uncertainty in the sector and brought clarity on how things would now be taken forward.
“We welcome the verdict, we will wait for TRAI's recommendations and proceed with the direction of the court,” Sibal said.
