New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear on May 29 an application filed by Cellular Operators Association of India seeking stay of the executive order passed by the Rajasthan Government on May 9 directing the operators to remove cell towers within 500 meters of jail premises within 30 days.
A vacation bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Navin Sinha posted the application for hearing after the matter was mentioned for early listing.
The Association said the Rajasthan government issued an earlier on August 31, 2002 directing them to remove the cell towers and the issue is now pending in an appeal in the Supreme Court. Even as it is pending the government issued an order on May 9 superceding the earlier order and giving 30 days time for removal of the towers within 500 meters of the jail premises. It said as of now there is no restriction now on establishing cell towers within 500 meters from the jail premises but also that the opertors are entitled to establish towers on public/private locations including roads, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, schools, land earmarked for public utilities.
The Association said that the operators will suffer grave and irrepaable injury if the government order is implemented. These towers service about eight lakh subscribers and any removal thereof will have a cascading effect adversely affect telecom services to the subscribers.
It said that there is no much flexibility/choice available with the servie providers as regards location of towers which is contingent upon various factors like density of subscribers, users of the mobile service at the given location, frequency allocation by the Government of India, scarcity of spectrum, requirement of signal strength etc. It prayed for a direction to stay the impugned order dated May 9 and a direction to the Rajasthan government not to insist on the operators to remove the towers which are 500 meters within the jail premises.
