Telcos' plea seeking recalculation of AGR dues dismissed by Supreme Court

Telcos' plea seeking recalculation of AGR dues dismissed by Supreme Court

The Department of Telecom (DoT) had made mistakes in calculating AGR dues, telecom companies had submitted and asked the court to allow rectification of the same. On Friday, the pleas by telecom companies Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Tata seeking correction of errors in Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues payable by them as per the apex court's October 2019 order were dismissed by the Supreme Court. A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Abdul Nazeer and MR Shah passed the order on the telcos' request seeking recalibration of AGR dues after correction of mistakes.

In September last year, the apex court had granted the telcos 10 years to clear their pending AGR dues to the central government with a payment of 10 per cent each year. For the first instalment, the telcos had been given the deadline of March 31, 2021.

Bharti Airtel's total liability was ₹43,980 crore while Vodafone-Idea's was ₹58,254 crore.

Vodafone's own former estimates had pegged the dues at Rs 21,533 crore, but the SC had stopped the telcos from assessing their own dues and had gone with the amounts cited by the DoT. As per the DoT, the telcos' AGR dues came to Rs 58,400 crore, of which Vodafone paid Rs 7,854 crore and now has to pay Rs 50,400 crore more in 10 equal instalments through March 31, 2031. Vodafone however said that whatever it had already paid was not taken into consideration by the DoT while putting forth the total amount payable by Vodafone.

Tata Teleservices too said it had already deposited Rs. 4,197 crore as AGR dues which was not taken into consideration by the DoT

According to Bharti Airtel, its total dues are ₹ 13,004 crore although it has already paid more than ₹ 18,000 crore out of the total AGR dues of ₹ 44,000 crore demanded by the DoT. So Airtel too argued that AGR payments earlier were not taken into account by the DoT