Top court struck down Loop telecom's Rs 1455 crore initial fee refund demand

04-03-2022

The Pinnacle court today ruled that Loop Telecom and its proponents can’t process a refund of the Rs1,455 crore initial fee paid in 2008 to take 2G spectrum licences, In Spite of the fact that they were not convicted in the 2G scam criminal case by the trial court.

Three member bench composed of D Y Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath delivered that the criminal case stood at an alternate footing - whether the telecom firm misled the Indian government while taking the 2G mobile service licence for numerous telecom circles.

The bench further delivered that non conviction in the trial court, appeal against which is not disposed before the Delhi High Court, is no clean chit from the top court’s 2012 finding that the telecom services providers, considering Loop, were involved completely with the Telecom department to get licenses through false propaganda of the then telecom minister A Raja's strange first-come-first-served policy.

The Apex court had rejected all 122 licences delivered through the FCFS policy and ordered the government to sell them through an auction in the open scale, which gained almost 10 times the earlier license fee for which the spectrum was licensed. Loop was among the very few which were fined Rs 50 lakh by the top court.

The bench said that Loop benefited from a false arbitrary policy which was adopted by the Central government and which struck down in the decision of this Court. That being the position, the appellant would not be given the right to get the refund of the initial Fee even on the principle of restitution under in Section 65 of the Indian Contract Act