SC refuses to entertain Vodafone, Airtel pleas for AGR relief
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected pleas by telecom majors Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Tata Teleservices for relief in the payments of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) liabilities.
A Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan termed the petitions 'misconceived.'
The telcos had wanted relief in the payment of their interest on the dues, penalty and interest on the penalty. They appealed to the Supreme Court's sense of equity, saying they were under severe financial strain owing to a series of court rulings on AGR over the years.
The companies sought a waiver of more than ₹40,000 crore in liabilities related to the AGR, invoking the fundamental right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution to afford all players an equal opportunity and level field. The companies had argued that a waiver was the need of the hour to ensure the stability of the sector.
In September last year, the apex court had dismissed curative petitions filed by the telecom service providers against an October 2019 judgment upholding the Department of Telecom's (DoT) move to recover AGR dues to the tune 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 has spanned over 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.
Following the dismissal of a review plea, the TSPs had moved a curative petition alleging errors in the computation of the AGR dues.
This was despite a July 2020 order, which had said that applications filed by the telecom majors to 'correct' Math mistakes, which at 'first blush' look 'innocuous', was a roundabout way to recompute their AGR debts –a path expressly forbidden by the Supreme Court in an earlier order. The July 2020 order had made it clear that 'no dispute could be raised in respect of AGR dues that had been arrived at, on the basis of calculations made by the Union of India'.
'No telecom operator shall raise any dispute in respect of the demand raised by the Department of Telecommunications pertaining to AGR dues, based on the judgment of this court of October 24, 2019. It was also held that there cannot be any reassessment,' the Supreme Court had reiterated.
In September 2020, the apex court had ordered that the annual 10% instalments of the TSPs towards their AGR dues would commence from April 1, 2021 up to March 31, 2031.
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