2G: Catharsis & Commercial Implications

This week Supreme Court Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly delivered a judgment that invalidated 122 telecom licenses and 2G spectrum acquired by 9 companies in 2008. The judgment has had a cathartic effect on a nation gripped by the corruption drama that's been playing in our courts for the last 2 years.  The judgment is landmark in that it questions the constitutional validity, fairness & public interest of an economic policy, castigates a regulator, accuses a cabinet minister of favouring some businesses and stage managing policy implementation and lauds the vigilance of enlightened citizens i.e. the petitioners, for fighting for clean governance.

But it is also landmark in the policy & commercial implications it will have. To discuss those implications CNBC TV18's Menaka Doshi is joined by Anil Divan, Senior Advocate - Supreme Court and Member of the Centre For Public Interest Litigation, Rajat Kathuria, Professor Economics at IMI and former consultant with TRAI and the World Bank, Bill Cook, head of the telecoms practice at DLA Piper and Co=chair of its India practice. In Mumbai with me, Pratibha Jain, former Goldman Sachs India counsel and now head of the Delhi practice of Nishith Desai Associates and Sanjeev Aga, former chief of Idea cellular, a company that will lose 9 licenses and spectrum as a consequence of this order. Below is the full interview. Doshi: I would like to start this discussion by talking about the key principles laid down by this judgment and their commercial implications and the most important is the stand that this judgment takes on the allocation process of natural resources by saying that first come first served is fundamentally flawed and that the State is duty-bound to adopt auction. So I am going to take you through some of the portions of the judgment that indicate this- the judgment says