Telecom tribunal TDSAT on Monday reserved its order on Bharti Airtel's plea against the government, which had slapped a penalty of Rs 50 crore on the service provider for alleged violation of licence terms and conditions by issuing bulk mobile connections.

A TDSAT bench, headed by its Chairman Justice S B Sinha, reserved order after briefly hearing the Department of Telecom (DoT) and Bharti Airtel.

On September 19, DoT had imposed penalty on the telecom operator after it found that the company had issued 1,847 bulk mobile connections to Falcon Business Resource Pvt Ltd and 741 to Galaxy Rent, violating the terms and conditions of the licence agreement.

However, the penalty was stayed by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) on October 5, till its further order, on the plea of Airtel.

"In the meantime, the respondent (DoT) may not take coercive steps to implement the impugned order dated September 19, 2011," TDSAT said while issuing notice to DoT.

Manisha Dhir, counsel representing DoT, submitted that by issuing sim cards to the companies, which later transferred it to NRIs and foreigners, Airtel breached the security conditions provided in the licence condition.

She further submitted that the government suffered loss of AGR (Adjusted Gross Revenue).

However, the charge was opposed by Bharti's counsel Gopal Jain, who said that AGR was rightly paid by the company to the government.

Jain further said that the two firm selling sim cards were actually franchisees and were distributing on behalf of Airtel.