Tuesday, July 12 2005 15:34 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Reliance Infocomm has challenged in the Supreme Court an order of telecom appellate tribunal TDSAT upholding imposition of a penalty of Rs 150 crore on it by the Government for allegedly resorting to call re-routing.

The Infocomm has contended that call re-routing was a global practice which was resorted to by all service providers including telecom PSUs MTNL (Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd) and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd).

Infocomm, the biggest private sector telecom company, which Anil Ambani got last month as part of settlement of Reliance ownership, moved the Apex Court for recovery of fine paid by it following the order by the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal in March.

Department of Telecom had imposed a penalty of Rs 150 crore on Reliance Infocomm for violating the licence condition and the same was challenged by Reliance in TDSAT.

In its petition, Infocomm said there was no violation of any law in call re-routing as it was a technical procedure adopted by the service providers all over the world.

On March 4, this year TDSAT had dismissed Reliance Infocomm's appeal with the Bench saying, "Having regard to all the circumstances, including the subject matter of license, the performance of the license provisions which have been breached, the circumstances in which breach was committed and the consequences of the breach, putting the security of the nation in jeopardy, we do not find it a fit case to be interfered with."

Reliance Infocomm, then owned by Mukesh Ambani, had paid the penalty under protest while reserving the right to challenge TDSAT's verdict in the Supreme Court.

Earlier in its reply in TDSAT, Government had said that Reliance Infocomm, by resoting to re-routing of incoming international calls, had tampered with the caller line identification which could lead to security threats.

According to Government, Reliance was re-routing the international calls in order to avoid levy payable by it to two telecom PSUs -- MTNL and BSNL.

In fact, both the PSUs had raised a demand of over Rs 550 crore on Reliance Infocomm to recover the levy, known as Access Deficit Charge (ADC) and the private operator has paid nearly Rs 500 crore to both the PSUs and the case was pending in the Delhi High Court.

Reliance filed the petition in the Supreme Court last week and the case is yet to come up for hearing.

While dismissing Reliance's petition, on March 4, this year, TDSAT had termed as "unscrupulous" the method employed by the private telecom company to comouflage international calls as local calls.

"The method Reliance Infocomm employed to camouflage an international call was certainly unprincipled and if we may say so unscrupulous," the then TDSAT Bench had said in a 90-page order while imposing a cost of Rs 25,000 on it.

Upholding the contention of Solicitor General G E Vahanvati, who appeared for DoT, TDSAT had said camouflaging of international calls by Reliance Infocomm was "in total breach of the licence condictions".