Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Friday alleged that public interest litigation (PIL) were being used to settle personal scores while clarifying on a petition filed in the Supreme Court accusing him of waiving off a huge penalty on Reliance Communications (RComm).
Sibal claimed that a penalty of Rs 5 crore was imposed on RComm for interruption of service as per agreement between Universal Service Obligation Fund and the company.
Sibal said RComm services were switched off for "whatever reasons" in November 2010 and on December 21, a show cause notice was issued to the company threatening imposition of "lumpsum" amount of Rs 50 crore as penalty for the same.
An NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), had filed the application in the Supreme Court seeking CBI probe against Sibal for allegedly favouring private firm by abusing his position to over-rule the unanimous view of senior DoT officials.
The petition alleged that Sibal had favoured private firm Reliance Communications by reducing the penalty from Rs 650 crore to Rs 5 crore in 13 circles.
The Department of Telecom secretary also backed Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal saying "there was no delay in submitting Reliance Communication files to me".
Sibal had earlier dismissed the petition as "motivated and defamatory”. "This whole process (petition) is malicious. This is motivated and defamatory. I wonder why proceedings have been filed in a court which is dealing with only 2G matters," Sibal told reports.
He said the case had nothing to do with 2G case, which is being heard by the Supreme Court.
0 comments:
Post a Comment