[Civil Appeal No. 4591 of 2014 @ Special Leave Petition (Civil) No.1804 of 2014]. We are in these appeals concerned with the scope and ambit of the powers and duties of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in relation to the proper computation and quantification of Revenue in determining the licence fee and spectrum charges payable to Union of India under Unified Access Services (UAS) Licences entered into between DoT and the private service providers. We have to examine the above-mentioned issue in the light of the various constitutional, statutory and licensing provisions, bearing in mind the fact that we are dealing with "spectrum", which is universally treated as a scarce finite and renewable natural resource, the intrinsic utility of that natural resource has been elaborately considered by this Court in Centre for Public Interest Litigation and others v. Union of India and others (2012) 3 SCC 1 and in the Presidential Reference, the opinion of which has been expressed in Natural Resources Allocation, in Re: Special Reference No.1 of 2012 decided on September 27, 2012, reported in (2012) 10 SCC 1. This Court reiterated that the spectrum as a natural resource belongs to the people, though State legally owns it on behalf of its people because State benefits immensely from its value. This Court in Centre for Public Interest Litigation and others (supra) referring to the intrinsic worth of spectrum stated as follows:
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