Telecom AGR dues: Supreme Court dismisses curative plea on computation ‘errors’
The Hindu
Supreme Court dismisses telecom providers' petition against ₹92,000 crore AGR dues, upholding government's calculation method.
The Supreme Court on Thursday (September 19, 2024) dismissed a curative petition filed by telecom service providers, including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, against the court’s October 2019 judgment upholding the Department of Telecom’s (DoT) move to recover Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) of about ₹92,000 crore from them.
The October 2019 verdict had said the telecom sector had long reaped the fruits of the Centre’s liberalised mode of payment by revenue sharing regime with the government. Under this mechanism, the operators had to pay a certain licensing fee and spectrum usage fee to the DoT. The Department calculated the fee as a percentage of the AGR. The dispute between the private telecom sector and the government over the calculation of the AGR spanned nearly two decades.
“The sector has benefited immensely under the scheme as apparent from the gross revenue trend from 2004 to 2015… The telecom service providers in spite of the financial benefits of the package started to ensure that they do not pay the licence fee to the public exchequer based on an agreed AGR,” the Supreme Court had observed in its 153-page judgment in 2019.
The court had dismissed the telecom service providers’ (TSP) objection to the government’s formulation of AGR.
The judgment had said the gross revenue would be inclusive of installation charges, late fees, sale proceeds of handsets (or any other terminal equipment etc.), revenue on account of interest, dividend, value-added services, supplementary services, access or interconnection charges, roaming charges, revenue from permissible sharing of infrastructure and any other miscellaneous revenue, without any set-off for related item of expense, etc.
CJI agrees to consider listing plea by Vodafone-Idea to correct computational errors in Adjusted Gross Revenue dues
Following the dismissal of a review plea, the TSPs had moved a curative petition alleging errors in the computation of the AGR dues.
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