Vodafone Idea Limited and Airtel AGR Update

Описание: Vodafone Idea Limited and Airtel AGR Update.Hearing in the Supreme Court on the AGR case has been postponed. Today all eyes were on Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, but now the hearing will be on Friday. Actually, Vodafone Idea, Airtel and RCom have demanded 10-15 years long for liability from Supreme Court. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that under AGR, Vodafone Idea has to pay Rs 50,399 crore and Bharti Airtel Rs 25,976 crore to the government.

During the hearing today, Justice Arun Mishra, along with Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was favoring the government, was deeply offended by the attitude of the telecom companies. He rebuked Tusshar Mehta and asked why the government is being so soft in this matter? And how much has the government received so far?

Aircel counsel Ravi Kadam said in the court that the company would sell its spectrum and license to pay the dues. Justice Mishra asked who allowed the sale of spectrum and licenses? In response, the company's counsel referred to NCLT. Justice Mishra then asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to inform him what plan the government had for recovering the AGR amount? And why can't spectrum be sold under IBC? However, during the hearing, the Solicitor General told the court that the government has so far recovered Rs 31,000 crore from RCom. Now the next hearing of the case will be on August 14, 2020.

What is AGR?
Adjusted gross revenue (AGR) is the licensing and usage fees charged by telecom companies from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Apart from this, it also includes spectrum usage charge (between 3 and 5 per cent) and licensing fees, which account for 8 per cent of the total profit, is also considered as part of AGR.

What is the dispute?

The root cause of the entire controversy is believed to be the calculation of AGR, as DoT is calculating AGR on the total income of telecom companies. Which clearly means that AGR includes the profit of companies as well as the profit and deposit interest earned on property sales. However, telecom companies only want the revenue generated on services to be part of AGR. In contrast, the telecom companies are demanding that only the total profits be considered as part of AGR.

In the last hearing, the Supreme Court had said that companies do not want to pay the amount of AGR, hence declaring themselves bankrupt. According to the data, Rs 1.47 lakh crore is owed under the AGR. The maximum amount to be deposited by Vodafone Idea is Rs 50,399 crore and Bharti Airtel Rs 25,976 crore. According to experts, the government is in a mood to relax telecom companies in this matter.

Veteran lawyers
of the country were present in the court during the hearing of AGR case on behalf of the telecom companies .

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta from Department of Telecommunications
Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Senior Advocate for Bharti Airtel
Will you be happy on behalf of Vodafone Idea
Ramji Srinivas and Arvind Datar from Tata Teleservices
Kapil Sibal for Hughes Communication
Ravi Kadam, Senior Advocate for Aircel
Shyam Dewan from RCom
#AGRdues #telecomnews