| The company has written a letter to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), a copy of which is in possession of Business Standard, seeking withdrawal of its application filed on January 10, 2005 | |
| The letter, signed by Idea vice-president (corporate finance) and company secretary Satish Rajgarhia, says: "We would like to withdraw our said application". | |
| Apart from a reference to the earlier letter, dated January 10, 2005, it does not mention anything on the deal. | |
| In January the company had sought permission to offload its 47.7 per cent stake to STT and TMI. | |
| However, FIPB had opposed this stating that STT holds stake in a competitive telecom operator, Bharti Tele-Ventures (BTVL). Both AirTel (brand owned by BTVL) and Idea also operate in same circles in certain states, which was also termed as "conflicting" by the regulator. | |
| This is against the FIPB rules and the regulator had asked Idea to get a no-objection certificate (NOC) from BTVL. But a "concurrence certificate was not forthcoming" and Idea decided to withdraw from the divestment of stake. | |
| Idea Cellular is owned by Cingular Wireless, its foreign stakeholder, and Tata and Aditya Birla group. | |
| The company was to offload Cingular's 32.9 per cent stake, along with Aditya Birla group's 6.7 per cent stake (of total 33 per cent) and Tata group's 8.3 per cent (of total 33 per cent). It is the fifth-largest mobile-phone company in India and has over 5.4 million subscribers. | |
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