Bharti Airtel, which was among the original mobile telephony licence holders, gained  9% while all other listed companies with exposure in telecom lost significantly after the Supreme Court cancelled the grant of the so-called second generation (2G) licenses allotted in 2008 during the tenure of A Raja as telecom minister.

With the grave uncertainty that is staring at these companies, their lenders and vendors spooked stocks of  Unitech, Reliance Communications, Idea and DB Realty with each of them losing 10% or more from the day's high, while Videocon Industries lost around 5%.

Even the large public sector banks such as SBI, PNB were also among losers. SBI has Rs 23,000 crore exposure to the troubled telecom firms. For example, Uninor has lost all its licences. The company had made an investment of $ 6 billion.

The Supreme Court held that 122 licences for 2G spectrum were granted in arbitrary and unconstitutional manner.

However, the Supreme Court has refused to direct the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the alleged role of Home Minister P Chidambaram in the 2G case and left it on the the trial court to decide on the same on within 2 weeks.

The judgements was pronounced by a bench comprising justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly.

The petitions on both the issues were filed by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) and Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy. The apex court has asked Trai to make fresh recommendation on grant of 2G licenses. SC said that the allocation of spectrum will be done through auction within 4 months.  

The SC has also asked the CBI to give status report on investigation to CVC.