By Aman Shah and Nivedita Bhattacharjee
MUMBAI, Feb 17 (Reuters) - India's Reliance Industries and seven others including top mobile phone operatorBharti Airtel have applied to participate in nextmonth's auction for mobile phone airwaves, several peopledirectly involved in the process said.
Others who have submitted applications for the auction thatwill start on March 4 include the local unit of Vodafone GroupPlc, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, and Tata Teleservices, the people said.
Aircel, India's sixth largest mobile telecoms operator, and Norwegian telecoms group Telenor's local unit Uninorare also among the applicants, said the people, who declined tobe named ahead of an official announcement. (Additional reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Writing by SumeetChatterjee; Editing by David Holmes)