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7. The brief case of the respondents is as follows:-

(i) According to the respondents, as per clause 4.22.2 of Notice Inviting Application (NIA) writ petitions are not maintainable before the Madras High Court and the Delhi High Court alone has jurisdiction to try the cases. As per clause 3.2.1(b) of the NIA, any company controlled by a person convicted for an offence involving moral turpitude or money laundering/drug trafficking, terrorist activities or declared as insolvent or applied for being declared insolvent, is disqualified. As per clauses 3.8 of the NIA, the Company as well as all Directors on the Board shall be security cleared and the Ministry shall take security clearance of the company as well as its Directors from relevant Government authorities.

14. The first issue that arise for consideration in these writ petitions is with regard to jurisdiction of the Madras High Court in entertaining the writ petitions. The learned Additional Solicitor General submitted that as per clause 4.22.2 of Notice Inviting Application (NIA) only the Delhi High Court has got jurisdiction and the Madras High Court has got no jurisdiction to entertain the writ petitions. The learned Senior Counsels appearing for the petitioners submitted that clause 4.22.2 of NIA is applicable only if there arises a dispute out of or in respect of the Notice Inviting Applications, e-auctions and its terms and conditions for award of FM Radio licenses under Phase-III and in the present writ petitions, the petitioners have neither challenged the Notice Inviting Applications nor e-auctions and its terms and conditions for award of FM Radio licenses under Phase-III, but have challenged only the orders dated 15.07.2015 passed by the second respondent denying security clearance, which are independent orders on arbitrary, illegal grounds violating Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. Hence, it would be appropriate to extract 4.22 of NIA, which reads as follows:-

17. The respective learned Senior Counsels appearing on behalf of the petitioners specifically stated that the petitioners have not challenged the terms and conditions of the NIA viz., clause 3.2.1 and 3.8 of the NIA and that they have only challenged the orders dated 15.7.2015 denying the security clearance to the petitioner companies. Since the petitioners are not challenging any one of the clause in the NIA, they cannot be prevented from challenging the impugned orders dated 15.7.2015 before this court.

30. Clause 10.8 of the NIA is the format for security clearance. As per the NIA, the applicants are required to submit a form as per clause 10.8 for security clearance. On a perusal of the said format, it is clear that it does not require the applicants to submit the details of the pendency of criminal case which itself would establish that the pendency of the criminal case, was never considered as a criteria for granting security clearance. If the contention of the respondents that pendency of the criminal cases would endanger the security, in that case, the respondents would have definitely asked the applicants to give the details of the pendency of criminal cases, which was not done by the respondents in clause 10.8. of the NIA.