SBI fights the court on what a telecom loan means

Akshara· Host0:04

In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about SBI moving the court on a telco decision, and then we'll talk about India's impending solar squeeze. Welcome back to The Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. I'm your host Akshara, and today is Friday, 24th April. Coming to the first story. So in 2018, Aircel filed for bankruptcy, and two years later, its resolution plan was approved. It's now April 2026, and the banks that lent it more than rupees 13,000 crore are still waiting to see any of it back. One of those banks was SBI, who led the consortium. So last month, SBI went to the Supreme Court asking it to reconsider a judgment delivered in February. In essence, the court told the banks that the collateral they thought backed their telecom loans was never really theirs to claim, and that collateral is spectrum, the radio frequency bands over which mobile data signals are transmitted and, in other words, the very foundation of any telecom network. Now, this sounds like a narrow legal dispute over a single failed telco. But dig deeper, and it's a question that reshapes how banks in India lend to any business built on a government-granted right. That would encompass telecom, mining, airports, highways, ports, oil and gas, almost every large piece of infrastructure. So to discuss what happened, let's set some context.