MUMBAI: The telecom department is unlikely to give an early approval to Reliance Communications spectrum sale to Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) with officials saying they won’t accept land as a guarantee for the telco’s spectrum dues and will file for a modification of a tribunal order.And to add to the debt-laden telco’s woes, HSBC Daisy Investments and other minority shareholders in Reliance Infratel have filed for contempt of court proceedings against the tower unit of Reliance Communications (RCom) for non-payment of Rs 232 crore within the end-September deadline. They join Ericsson, which has already filed a similar plea, but against RCom chairman Anil Ambani, who had given a personal guarantee that the Swedish equipment maker would be paid Rs 550 crore to settle a dispute around dues by September 30.The Department of Telecommunications’ ( DoT ) latest stance will mean RCom is unlikely to be able sell its spectrum to Jio in 10 days—a timeline the telco had assured in the Supreme Court on October 4—which would lead to further delays in its payment to Ericsson, HSBC and others.The Supreme Court will next hear the RCom-Ericsson case on October 9, while the Reliance Infratel hearing is also expected this coming week.Last week, RCom got a big relief after the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal ( TDSAT ), in an interim order, directed DoT to “expeditiously” allow the carrier to sell spectrum to Jio without bank guarantees from the debt-laden telco. However, the tribunal also directed RCom not to sell a land parcel worth Rs 1,400 crore “for the time being”. The land will stand as guarantee against the government’s demand for dues worth Rs 2,947.68 crore.“DoT will not accept land as a guarantee and we will request the tribunal to assure us bank guarantees. Also, the land given to us is not even part of RCom but another company, so how can we take that?,” said an official aware of the developments.The land to be kept as the guarantee is a 536,092 square meter parcel in Navi Mumbai, which has been valued at Rs 4,000-6,000 crore and belongs to Reliance Realty.“There will be no ‘expeditious’ clearance for the RCom-Jio deal. But the TDSAT hearing of October 16 could be brought forward due to RCom’s urgency,” the official said.Even if it the hearing is brought forward, it will still be touch-and-go for RCom whose counsel Mukul Rohatgi had last Thursday told the apex court that “things would work themselves out in 10 days”. RCom said that Ericsson and HSBC Daisy will be paid from the Rs 975 crore that it will get from the spectrum sale to Jio.Reacting to ET’s queries on HSBC Daisy’s and other minority shareholders' contempt plea, an RCom spokesperson said no contempt notice has been served against the company or its unit, Reliance Infratel, and “as per our lawyers' information, it may be lying in the defect before NCLAT (National Company Law Appellate Tribunal)”.“Any such action by HSBC Daisy Investments, if true, is unwarranted,” the spokesperson said. HSBC declined commentHSBC Daisy and other minority shareholders had opposed the telco’s move to sell its tower assets—housed under Reliance Infratel—without taking it into confidence and dragged the operator to the insolvency court. The two parties had then agreed to settle the matter out of court with RCom agreeing to pay Rs 232 crore.The Ericsson-RCom dispute, on the other hand, is over non-payment of Rs 550 crore by RCom by September 30, the stipulated time limit. RCom has filed for a 60-day extension to the deadline both in the Supreme Court and NCLAT, which had overseen the settlement between the telco and Ericsson. The Swedish company has opposed RCom’s extension request.Last week, the apex court was made to understand that after the interim order of TDSAT, RCom will soon get DoT’s nod to sell its airwaves to Jio. But now with latest spanner from the DoT in the clearances, both Ericsson and HSBC Daisy may not be willing to wait further and this may drag the Anil Ambani-owned telco back into insolvency.RCom, under a debt of Rs 46,000 crore, is desperately trying to sell its assets to Jio and Brookfield for about Rs 18,000 crore. While fibre and switching nodes have gone to Jio for Rs 5,000 crore, spectrum and towers are yet to be sold to the Mukesh Ambani-owned telco and and some real estate sale to Canadian asset management firm Brookfield is also pending.