Wednesday, August 07, 2013: At a public forum, the Communications and Information Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal made it clear that penalty issues should be referred to the sector regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). He opined that the sum of money in question was unjustified in majority cases.
“Penalty is not a source of revenue for the government. The Rs 50-crore penalty is not justified. The government does not make money. But imposition of penalty just helps the lawyers to make money,” said Sibal in a Business Standard report.
TRAI Chairman, Rahul Khullar held the same viewpoint as Sibal regarding the imposition of Rs 500 million penalty per service area. He felt that it was ‘absurd.’ He said this at a telecom summit organized by the Confederation of India Industry (CII) in association with the Department of Telecommunications.
Presently, telecom operators owe a penalty of Rs 7 billion. Penalty notices of Rs 12 billion has been sent to these telecos for 3G intra-circle roaming issue. Another penalty of Rs 7.5 billion is pending at the telecos end for the violation of the subscriber local dialing norms.
Even Telecom Secretary M F Farooqui, who attended the CII Summit is of the view that the telecom industry is over-regulated.
