Supreme Court rejects telecom companies plea on dues owed to govt

The companies had argued that the country's telecommunications department made significant errors in calculating the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues, the basis for license fee calculation owed to the government.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has dismissed curative petitions filed by telecom companies, including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, against the judgment, directing them to pay adjusted gross revenue (AGR).

A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna and B R Gavai also rejected their applications for listing the curative petitions in open court.

The curative petitions, like the review petitions, are usually decided by judges in the chamber. It is seen as a last legal resort by a party aggrieved with the Supreme Court's judgment.

In its August 30 order uploaded recently, the bench said, “We have gone through the curative petitions and the connected documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra v Ashok Hurra (2002)”.

Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel, and other telecom companies had filed the curative petitions, primarily aggrieved with the apex court's October 2019 verdict, which directed them to pay the government Rs 92,000 crore within three months.

In January 2020, the apex court dismissed the review petitions filed by the telecom companies against the October 2019 judgment.

The apex court in July 2021, had dismissed a plea seeking correction of errors in the demand of AGR dues. The telecom companies had then moved the issue to the top court claiming there were several errors in arriving at the AGR dues, which was computed as over Rs 1 lakh crore.

In September 2020, the court had directed the telecom companies for payment of AGR dues over 10 years; 10 per cent of the total by March 31 every year.

On September 15, 2021, the Centre had approved a four-year moratorium on payment of statutory dues by telecom companies, which came as a relief to ailing telecom operators like Vodafone Idea that have to pay thousands of crores of rupees of the past statutory dues. Along with that, the government also rationalised the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) by excluding non-telecom revenues of telecom firms.