Supreme Court reserves its order in Airtel, Vodafone Idea's Adjusted Gross Revenue case

Supreme Court on Monday reserved its order on Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Ideas plea seeking direction for correction of errors in Adjusted Gross Revenue AGR calculationA threejudge Bench of the apex court headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao reserved its order today after Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea submitted to the apex court and complained that there were errors in AGR calculationThe Supreme Court said list the matter after two weeks and asked the Solicitor General SG Tushar Mehta appearing for the Department of Telecommunications DOT to file a detailed response on the application filed by TATA Vodafone Idea and AirtelSenior lawyer Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Vodafone Idea submitted to the apex court that the issue was going up and down as AGR definition was not clear We had succeeded in Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal TDSAT but the judgment was set aside Then entire liability was imposed on us along with interest and penalty dues around Rs 58000 crores he submittedWhile trying to let the court understand how the entry was wrongly made Rohatgi cited an example and said that in one of the entries the actual payment made was Rs 155 crores but the Department of Telecommunications DoT considered it as in final total is around Rs 1532 croresI have paid Rs 7854 crore I have complied with the undertaking to pay which I have done Rohatgi for Vodafone Idea saidI am not blaming DoT not asking for a review Not doing anything Rohtagi saidThe Supreme Court while citing its earlier order said the reassessment and reevaluation cant be done in this case the earlier judgment says soDr Abhishek Manu Singhvi the senior lawyer for Airtel said that there is duplicationSeveral reports audits and checks are reported Purely by oversight some paymentsdeductions are not taken into consideration by the DoTWe are not blaming the department which has not been able to take any decision with respect to our three categories Dr Singhvi said and made it clear to the apex court that according to them they have paid much more than 10 per cent around Rs 18400 odd croresDr Singhvi said We are fully complying with the SC judgment Now I do not want to pay thousands of crores due to these errors of DoTSupreme Court had in its judgment in September last year granted telecom companies including Airtel Bharti Vodafone Idea etc a period of 10 years to clear their pending AGR dues to the Central governmentThe top court had on July 20 reserved its order on the timeline for the payment of AGR dues by telecom companies after observing that the request of telecom companies seeking 15 to 20 years for the payment of AGR dues in a staggered manner was unreasonableThe bench was hearing a petition filed by the Central government through the DoT seeking the approval of a formula allowing telecom service providers to make annual installments of unpaid or remaining AGR dues in the next 1520 yearsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever