In
a setback for telecom companies, the Supreme Court dismissed the applications
filed by telecom majors, including Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Tata
Teleservices, for recomputing adjusted gross revenue (AGR) owed to the
government. Telecom companies had moved the Supreme Court last year seeking
modification in the top court's verdict in the AGR matter.
“All
the miscellaneous applications are dismissed,” a bench headed by Justice L
Nageswara Rao said while pronouncing the order in the case. The Supreme court
bench was scheduled to pronounce the order on Thursday, but that was cancelled
at the last hour.
In
September last year, the top court had granted the telecom companies a period
of 10 years to pay their pending AGR dues, amounting to ? 93,520 crore, to the
government. The top court had also mandated that 10 per cent of the outstanding
amount would have to be paid by March 31, 2021.
According
to the Department of Telecom, Bharti Airtel owed more than Rs 43,000 crore as
AGR dues, while Vodafone Idea's balance payment exceeded ? 50,000 crore.
In
January this year, the companies had moved the top court seeking directions to
the government to recalculate AGR dues, citing “mathematical errors” in
calculation of the outstanding amount.
Voda
Idea had claimed that its dues were ? 58,000 crore and debt amounted to ? 1.8
lakh crore, and had sought a correction in its “arithmetic errors,” whereas
Bharti Airtel had claimed duplication and unaccounted payments.
The
dispute centres around the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR). Telecom
companies pay a percentage of their revenues as license fee to government and
their contention was that non-core businesses such as rent or income from sale
of handsets or roaming charges should not be included in the revenue of which
they pay a percentage - they only wanted to pay on revenues earned from their
core business.
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