Shivani Pandey-
The Supreme Court on Friday denied the pleas of telecom companies wanting recomputation of the Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues requested by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
A bench of Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice Hrishikesh Roy dismissed the application filed by Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices.
In September last year, The Apex court had allowed the telecom companies to pay off the AGR dues in over 10 installments, starting from 1st April. In the similar order the Apex Court had strictly denied any kind of re-assessment of the AGR dues.
Thereafter, the three telecom companies moved the Court alleging that there are calculation errors in the dues computed by the DoT. Senior Advocates Mukul Rohatgi, Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Arvind Datar, appearing for Vodafone-Idea, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices respectively, stated that the earlier order did not limit correction of calculation errors.
The order only limits reassessment and does not bar rectification of calculative errors.
The issue arose from the interpretation of a term “Adjusted Gross Revenue” given by the supreme court in October 2019 in the spectrum licensing agreements between telecom companies and the DoT. The license fee is determined based on AGR. The Supreme Court held that ‘AGR’ includes revenue from non-telecom operations of the companies like rent, profit on sale of fixed assets, dividend and treasury income. Thud resulting in an additional liability to the tune of Rs 92,000 crores on the telecom companies overall.
