False ring

The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) has set aside several recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in recent months. In most cases, including in the recent ‘dual-technology’ case, it has been quite scathing. In the case of the recommendations on cable television pricing, TDSAT said they ‘must be based on a more rational analysis than what was attempted’ and they were ‘arbitrary and irrational’; in the ‘dual-technology case’, it said ‘the confusion has been created by Trai’. So it does come as a bit of a surprise that TDSAT members now want to head Trai. GD Gaiha, one of the three members of TDSAT, applied for the job, but was not shortlisted. Another member, JS Sarma, has been called to meet the selection committee headed by the cabinet secretary. There is the obvious impropriety — regulators and appellate tribunals should, logically, not be appointed to fresh jobs by the government since this compromises their neutrality. It is also difficult to see how Trai will appeal against TDSAT judgements, as some of its members want to do right now, if the person who wrote them is to head it.