Organising a press conference today, representatives of CG Telecom claimed that the company had met all legal compliances for unified licence three years ago and lamented that the government was unwilling to issue the licence to CG Telecom for no valid reason.

The unified licence enables an operator to run all telecommunication services throughout the country. Addressing the conference, Nirvana Chaudhary, managing director of Chaudhary Group (CG), claimed that CG Telecom had met all legal requirements for the unified licence and has also cleared all dues to the government. “However, it is suspicious that the government is not giving us the unified licence. The government should justify the reasons behind denying such licence to CG,” he said. Citing that CG Telecom is coming up with plans to make its voice and data services cheaper in the domestic market, Chaudhary said that denying the company the necessary licences will directly affect consumers. Meanwhile, he also said that CG Telecom is not liable to pay Rs 20 billion to get the unified licence as stated by Minister for Communications and Information Technology Gokul Prasad Baskota. Minister Baskota recently had said publicly that CG Telecom should pay the given amount to get the unified licence. “Any telecom operator needs to pay Rs 20 billion while renewing their licence 10 years after receiving the licence initially. However, the minister wrongly said that the amount needs to be paid while obtaining the unified licence,” said Chaudhary. “As provisioned in the law, we will pay Rs 350 million to get the unified licence and pay the renewal fees in instalments. The government should give us the licence or should justify why the licence is not being issued to CG,” he added. Moreover, Chaudhary informed that CG has officially asked the government to provide the reasons for not issuing the unified licence to CG Telecom. “However, the government has not responded yet.”