"The judgement is reserved," Justice Rajiv Shakdher said after hearing brief arguments advanced by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for RTL.
The private telecom major, in its petition, has sought a direction to restrain the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) from enforcing the demands of penalty raised by it on grounds of incomplete and faulty customer details of post-paid customers in Assam and northeast circles.
On July 5, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) had dismissed the plea of several telecom operators including RTL for a review of a March 13 interim order asking them to pay the full penalty, except for certain categories, imposed by the DoT.
RTL also alleged that a DoT circular, issued on July 20, 2010, wrongly extended the subscriber verification guidelines, meant for Jammu and Kashmir, to Assam and northeast telecom circles.
Seeking quashing of orders passed by the TDSAT, the petition alleged the penalties "levied on petitioner (RTL) were even otherwise erroneous as they had been raised on an incorrect application of the slab system prescribed by the Respondent (DoT) vide its circular dated August 24, 2008".
TDSAT had earlier held that for connections activated between July 20, 2010, and March 31, 2011 on the basis of photo identity issued by village panchayats and caste and domicile certificate by the state governments, operators would have to pay only 25 per cent of the penalty. (More)