The Supreme Court dismissed petitions filed by telecom companies to refigure the adjusted gross revenues (AGR). This comes amid a long-standing dispute over payment of dues to the government.
The curative petition was listed before a bench comprising chief justice DY Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna and BR Gavai.
The curative petitions were filed by Vodafone India, Bharti Airtel, and others, challenging a 2019 verdict mandating payment of Rs 92,000 crore to the government within three months. The telcos argued that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) made a grave error in calculating these dues, which include licence fees and spectrum charges.
The companies said that the court had imposed ‘arbitrary penalties’ on them. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea requested the Supreme Court to hear their curative petitions against an earlier order from 2019.
THE AGR CASE
In 2019, the Supreme Court had ruled in favour of the government and ordered the telecom companies to pay Rs 92,000 crore within 180 days. Of the Rs 1.47 lakh crore of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues that the telcos were asked to pay by January 2020, 75 per cent or over Rs 92,000 crore were licence fees, and Rs 55,054 crore were spectrum usage charge.
Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel soon took hits, reporting record losses. AGR essentially determines how telcos share revenue with the government that earns from licences and spectrum uses. The government’s share is calculated on a percentage of AGR for spectrum and licencing fees.
The contention is that telcos argue that AGR should only cover core revenue but the government wants to include all forms of revenue, even non-telecom income.
In 2022, Airtel and Vodafone deferred payment of about Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 8,837 crore respectively in AGR dues by four years.