Norway’s Telenor has said that the company will 'fight to protect its lawful investments in the country,' a day after the Supreme Court ordered the cancellation of 122 telecom licenses issued after January 2008.
The order resulted in cancellation of all 22 licenses held by its Indian subsidiary, Uninor, which it owns in partnership with real estate company Unitech. Telenor has a 67.25% which it purchased in 2009 for Rs 6,000 crore. That deal is being scrutinized clearly amid allegations that Unitech made a quick profit by buying a telecom license for Rs 1,600 crore and then selling it at a massive mark-up. The promoters point out that they did not sell their stake, but diluted equity by issuing fresh shares. The government has said that neither Unitech nor Telenor broke the laws that prevailed at the time.
“Telenor Group wants to be clear that Uninor operations are continuing. Our intention is to fight to protect our lawful investments in the country. We are looking to the government to arrive at a fair solution. We expect that the intention remains of bringing new competition to India,” the company clarified in a statement released this afternoon. Uninor has 36 million subscribers in India.
The press release was issued after an international news agency reported that Telenor could quit India after the Supreme Court order. That report quoted Telenor CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas saying that Telenor may not wait for new market rules to be introduced.
“The Norwegian government has announced that they are monitoring the situation and will actively contribute to find solutions to secure Telenor’s investments and presence in India,” the company said in a statement today.
On Thursday, India’s highest court scrapped 122 licenses held by various operations, saying that the first-come first-served process by which they had been awarded was flawed, and recommended that the government re-issue licenses through an auction process.
The court’s ruling was in response to a public interest litigation filed by politician Subramanian Swamy and lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan alleging that some telecom operators had been granted licenses at throwaway prices by unfair means.
A Raja, then telecom minister, has been accused of unduly favouring some firms in the licensing process and has seen been arrested for deliberately under-valuing licenses and spectrum and selling them to ineligible companies who he moved to the head of the queue.