In a big turn in the Aircel-Maxis scam probe, the Supreme Court on Friday ordered the DoT to come with a plan to sell the spectrum allotted to Aircel and stop any revenues flow to its Malaysian promoters, T Ananda Krishnan and Ralph Marshal, if they did not appear in the 2G court in two weeks.
The next date of hearing is February 3. In CBI’s chargesheet filed on August 29, 2014, it was alleged that then Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran arm-twisted Aircel to offload its stake to Maxis. Separately, the Enforcement Directorate also chargesheeted the Malaysian tycoons.
In the event the owner or the company failed to appear, the SC proposed to restrain them from earning any revenue from the said licence. The SC also observed that in such an event the DoT may think of re-auction or transfer the subscribers to an existing operator.
The SC order came on a PIl filed by Centre for Public Interest litigation led by Prashant Bhushan. The petition said Reliance Communication and Airtel had entered into a “covert” agreements with Aircel to acquire its assets, which is illegal when the major promoters were evading law.
The Bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar, Justices NV Ramana and DY Chandrachud said priority was not to stop sale of spectrum but to ensure the attendance of Maxis owner Ananda Krishnan and its director Augustus Ralph Marshall, who have evaded all summons issued by the court and the CBI.
“We must have the accused before us. If he has to use 2G spectrum, he (Ananda Krishnan) must appear before us. But to say we will hold on to the natural asset (spectrum) yet run away from the court will not be accepted,” said SC.
In order to enforce the presence of the accused (Ralph Marshall, Ananda Krishnan, Astro All Asia Networks limited and Maxis Communication), we propose to restrain, earning of any revenue, by using the 2G spectrum license, which were originally granted to Aircel, said the SC.
The court asked the Centre to publish its order in two leading newspapers in Malaysia for the knowledge of the accused. “In case the proposed order is passed, it will not be open to any of the accused, to raise an objection with reference to any monetary loss emerging
out of our proposed order,” the court added.