April 5: J T Mobile today moved Delhi High Court seeking to stay on a Department of Telecom (DoT) notice to terminate its licence to operate cellular service in Punjab Telecom circle.The DoT letter, dated March 26, says that the licence shall stand terminated automatically without any further notice if licence fee arrears worth Rs 348 crore including interest was not paid within a period of 30 days. After a brief hearing, Justice M K Sharma adjourned the case for April 21. As per the DoT letter, one month notice period will end on March 25 and termination of licence will come into force immediately after that.According to licence agreement, DoT is required to give one month notice to mobile cellular service provider to terminate the licence. Counsel for JT Mobile, Shanti Bhushan said that the company should not be forced to pay the licence fee for the period they have not been able to actually operate the service because of DoT's failure to grant certain permissions.Bhushan said the departmentgranted permission to Evergrowth Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of JT Mobile, to operate mobile service in Punjab in 1996 which was cancelled in 1997 and restored in 1998 which led to delay.DoT counsel Rakesh Tiku said the permission to Evergrowth to operate service on behalf of JT Mobile was conditional and it was withdrawn by the department following the company's failure to fulfil those conditions.JT Mobile, in its petition, said since the department had not permitted it to operate the service actually, the company was not liable to pay the licence fee for the period concerned.The company further said that because of an interim order granted by a division bench of the high court in an another case of JT Mobile, its liability to pay licence fee should be suspended.However, DoT counsel said JT Mobile was never stopped from operating the service and Evergrowth's failure to start service would not absolve the licensee from payment of fee.Tiku said in April 1996, Evergrowth was granted permissionto operate cellular service in Punjab circle with certain conditions. "As the conditions were not fulfilled, the permission became inoperative and the department invoked the bank guarantee of JT Mobile worth Rs 35 crore for Punjab circle in 1997," DoT counsel said.Later, JT Mobile agreed to comply with all terms and conditions set by DoT and as a result of which the department, in 1998, restored the permission to Evergrowth to provide cellular service in Punjab on behalf of JT Mobile, Tiku said.On January 25, 1999, DoT issued letters to all telecom operators including JT Mobile to clear their licence fee or pay 20 per cent of the total dues for Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab circles by February 15 which was later extended to February 28. But the company failed to pay.In another development, BPL Cellaular today withdrew its petition seeking interim injunction against DoT from encashing its bank guarantee.
