Airtel has approached Communications Minister Kapil Sibal for waiving of the Rs. 650 crore penalty ordered by DOT for offering STD services as local calls and causing revenue loss to the government.

The plea of Airtel is that since this case relates to eight years back, it will cause much hardships for payment of the penalty. Wonderful! Not only this company has cheated the government and violated the licence conditions and still want to be exonerated from payment of penalty. If all these calls were routed as STD calls it would have to pay more than double this amount.

Let us see what decision Communications Minister will take. The government which is not even reimbursing the spectrum fee even after vacating the spectrum by BSNL, will it show favour to the private company?