On the 1st of September, the Supreme Court (SC,) announced the verdict on pending Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) to be paid by Telecom companies in India.
The SC ordered all telecom companies to pay their dues within 10 years.
Total dues which run into about Rs 1.6 lakh crores would be paid 10 years from now.
The bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra issued following directions and said, “The telecom firms will have to pay 10 % of dues by 2021 due to Covid-19 and the rest can be paid in instalments by March 31, 2031.”
If the companies fail to pay the dues by the given time, they would be punished under contempt of court.
On the point as to whether spectrum can be sold by the telecom companies facing proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), the bench asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to decide whether spectrum can be subject matter of the resolution process.
The matter of AGR issue was pending with the Court since October 2019. In October, the Court said about the AGR issue for calculating government dues of telecom companies, such as Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices, as licence fee and spectrum usage charges.
Later, in March the department of telecommunications urged the Apec Court for staggered payment in a time period of nearly 20 years for the telecom companies.
On August 21, 2020 the Top court directed the DoT to apprise its basis of spectrum sharing done by telecom companies and how much is the liability of the sharers.
The Apex Court asked the DoT secretary to file a specific affidavit apprising it about who was using the spectrum from the date of grant of license and from which date the respective sharing of spectrum has taken place.
Now, after today’s verdict, telecommunication companies would pay AGR by 2031. The first installment of 10% of payment would be paid by 2021.
Stay tuned for further updates.
