NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has rejected curative petitions filed by telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, challenging an October 2019 ruling that mandates them to pay over ₹1 lakh crore in adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
The court’s decision on the curative petitions was made on August 30 and uploaded to its website on Thursday. In the order, a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud stated, “We have reviewed the Curative Petitions and accompanying documents. In our view, no case is made out within the parameters established in the 2002 Rupa Ashok Hurra v Ashok Hurra decision.” The 2002 ruling defines the criteria for accepting a review or curative petition if a court’s decision has an apparent error or causes manifest injustice.
The bench, which also included Justices Sanjiv Khanna and BR Gavai, made its decision in chambers and denied the telecom companies’ request for a public hearing.
The curative petitions contested the court’s October 24, 2019 verdict that allowed the DoT to include non-telecom revenue in the AGR calculation.
Based on the figures presented to the court, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea were required to pay ₹43,980 crore and ₹58,254 crore, respectively. Other companies facing AGR dues included Reliance Telecom (₹25,199 crore), Tata Group (₹16,798 crore), and Aircel (₹12,389 crore). Review petitions from these companies were dismissed in January 2020.
Facing massive liabilities that threatened their operations and with some companies—Aircel, Reliance Telecom, Sistema Shyam, and Videocon Telecommunications—undergoing insolvency proceedings, the government proposed in March 2020 that the AGR dues be paid in 20 equal instalments.
The Supreme Court partially accepted this request on September 1, 2020, allowing telecom firms to pay the dues over 10 annual instalments from April 2021 to March 2031. Companies were also required to pay penalties and interest in the event of default, with the risk of contempt of court proceedings.
Since this order modified the 2019 judgment, the curative petitions effectively challenged this revised decision.
During the 2020 proceedings, the government revised the total outstanding dues to over ₹1.43 lakh crore. Bharti Airtel had paid ₹18,000 crore, leaving ₹25,976 crore outstanding, while Vodafone Idea had deposited ₹3,500 crore, with ₹54,754 crore remaining unpaid. Tata still owed over ₹12,600 crore. Even state-owned telecom providers BSNL and MTNL had dues of ₹5,835 crore and ₹4,352 crore, respectively.
The current consolidated dues are not clear.
To clarify, AGR is a revenue-sharing model based on a policy framed under the Indian Telegraph Act, which grants the government exclusive rights over telecommunications. The October 2019 judgment upheld the government’s stance that various revenue streams should be included in AGR calculations.
Telecom companies had previously self-assessed their AGR dues and reported figures far lower than the amounts calculated by the DoT. However, the September 2020 judgment closed the door on any future reassessment, stating that telecom operators could not challenge the DoT’s AGR demands or seek re-assessment.
