Enough has been written about the issues with the original Supreme Court (SC) judgment on the AGR dues of telecom firms, which includes its acceptance of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) view that license costs and spectrum usage charges (SUC) had to be paid on even non-telecom revenues such as interest earned on bank deposits. It was equally odd that SC decided to levy big penalties and interest on what it decided had been the AGR dues following all, though the dispute on what comprised income had been going on for a extended time, in 2006, 2007, 2011 and 2015, many courts had ruled in favour of the telcos. So, if the SC ruling on what basically comprised AGR was the initial time that a definitive ruling was offered on this, charging penalties seemed unfair.
Given the higher interest levels in the previous, this elevated the AGR dues by virtually 4 instances. In which case, a new economic burden that has virtually crippled the market would not be as huge a burden. Indeed, looked at a further way, the government is earning a lot more now than it would have earned in the previous had the definition of AGR been settled then. An physical exercise performed by this newspaper revealed that, if the DoT had told telcos their revenues had been Rs one hundred more due to the wider definition of AGR in 2007, they would have paid Rs 12 more in that year. That very same Rs 12 has turn out to be Rs 94 today thanks to the penalty clause, addition of interest and interest on the penalty. All of this, on the other hand, is water below the bridge considering the fact that SC had refused to grant the telcos any relief when they challenged the original judgment.
Hopefully, the court will appear at the new plea of the telcos sympathetically. They are not difficult the principle of what revenues are to be regarded as portion of the AGR, nor are they difficult whether or not the quantity must be paid retrospectively and whether or not interest/penalty must be paid on it. All that they are saying is that DoT produced various computational errors when it place out the AGR dues. Indeed, the DoT table that estimates the dues of every telco that is cited in the initial SC ruling on AGR clearly says the dues are “as per preliminary assessments” and that these are “subject to further revisions due to departmental assessments, CAG audits … etc”. So, for instance, if telcos submitted their expenditures for every telecom circle late to the DoT though depositing the AGR, the DoT would say there was a delay and then levy interest/penalty on it there are various other such situations that have been cited by the telcos, which includes duplications in the income additions by DoT.
Sadly, in the previous, when the telcos brought this up at the SC, the court ruled that this was akin to reopening its order. It is absolutely nothing of the sort, so hopefully, the SC will view this with an open thoughts. After all, if the DoT has produced an error in its calculation, organic justice demands that this be fixed. Ideally, considering the fact that the government is a party to the case, and it also stands to shed if the market goes below, thanks to the big payment obligations, it also must petition the court on the matter.