AGR issues again in Supreme Court

The subject of additional cost and the overall quantity due by telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Tata Teleservices is again within the Supreme Court, which can now must resolve on the matter. Last 12 months in September, the Supreme Court had ordered that the businesses must pay their dues over a 10-year interval, after paying 10 per cent of the dues upfront by March 31, 2021. Thereafter, the deferred cost cycle would run until 2031 with the ten per cent quantity to be paid by March 31 yearly.
However, not one of the three firms paid the ten per cent of the due quantity on March 31, 2021. The reasoning of the businesses is that no matter they’ve paid up to now is greater than 10 per cent so that they weren’t required to pay something additional by the March 31 deadline. For occasion, the overall dues of Bharti as per the Department of Telecommunications is Rs 43,980 crore and earlier than the SC’s ultimate order, it had paid Rs 18,004 crore. Similarly, the overall dues of Vodafone stood at Rs 58,254 crore and it had paid Rs 7,854 crore. In the case of Tata Teleservices, the overall quantity is Rs 16,798 crore and it had paid Rs 4,197 crore.
However, the DoT’s interpretation of the order is totally different. It stated that the apex court docket didn’t imply 10 per cent of the overall dues however 10 per cent of the stability dues, so the operators have been required to shell out extra quantity.

Now, because the firms haven’t paid any extra quantity, the DoT will file a standing report within the SC and look ahead to additional instructions.
The matter doesn’t finish right here, as there’s one other level which the businesses have raised, which the SC had agreed to listen to however not mounted a date up to now.

All the three telecom operators have petitioned the apex court docket in search of modification of its order in order that DoT can contemplate their submissions concerning arithmetical errors within the calculations concerning the AGR dues. For occasion, Vodafone Idea in its petition has acknowledged that the calculations made by DoT had errors like double counting, not contemplating funds already made, not adjusting for interconnect funds, and so forth. It has stated that the surplus demand because of these errors is to the tune of Rs 5,932 crore of principal quantity, which might have an general influence of over 4 occasions on the overall principal quantity because of imposition of curiosity, penalty and curiosity on penalty.