The Delhi High Court on Thursday rejected DoT’s plea seeking a stay on a tribunal order that restrained the latter from imposing a ban on 3G roaming pacts between mobile operator.

The court ruled that TDSAT had the jurisdiction to hear plea of the telcos challenging DoT’s order banning 3G roaming services offered by operators in each others' circles.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said they were not inclined to interfere with the tribunal orders and dismissed the petition.

DoT had challenged the TDSAT’s ruling which gave an interim relief to the telcos who sought the tribunal’s intervention on DoT’s order scarping the 3G roaming pacts between the operators.

The  Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) on January 19 had  ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear the telcos’ appeal against the DoT’ order to scrap the pacts.

The tribunal also reserved the order till February 2 when the next hearing comes up. A bench of Judges S.B. Sinha and P.K. Rastogi, however, directed the service operators to handover the roaming agreements copies to DoT.

The major telcos like Bharti, Vodafone, Idea, Tatas and Aircel had moved TDSAT on December 24 on DoT’s order to scrap the 3G roaming pacts between the private operators. The government in December last year had called these pacts illegal. The telcos in sharp reaction called the government’s move as arbitrary and illogical.  

But as demanded by DoT, the tribunal felt that copies of agreements on 3G roaming to the DoT should be given to the government with telcos insisting that in such a case the government would have to maintain the confidentiality of these pacts. Earlier they had refused to share the copies of agreements with DoT.