New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed review petitions of top telecom firms including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea seeking review of its earlier order asking them to pay Rs 1.47 lakh crore in past statutory dues by January 23 saying it did not find any "justifiable reason" to entertain them. The apex court had, on October 24, ruled that the statutory dues needed to be calculated by including non-telecom revenues in what is known as adjusted gross revenues (AGR) of telcos. A bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra, S A Nazeer and M R Shah in-chamber hearing did not find merit in the review plea and dismissed it.

The telecom companies had sought an open court hearing on their review petition but the Supreme Court decided to stick to its convention of doing an in-chamber hearing. "Applications for hearing in open court/oral hearing are rejected. Having perused the review petitions and the connected papers with meticulous care, we do not find any justifiable reason to entertain the review petitions. The review petitions are, accordingly, dismissed," the bench said. The apex court had on October 24 last year upheld the AGR definition formulated by the DoT and termed as "frivolous" the nature of objections raised by telecom service providers.