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Journalism of Courage
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) plans to start sending payment notices again to all telecom and non-telecom companies which owe it adjusted gross revenue (AGR) based on the Supreme Court’s judgment and all other license fee dues, two people familiar with the matter said.
It was in this regard that the DoT had last week sent a notice to Power Grid to pay Rs 13,613.66 crore as national long distance license fee, the interest on the unpaid dues, the penalty, and the interest on penalty for non-payment for financial years 2006-07 to 2009-10, a DoT official said.
Earlier in March, the DoT had sent notices to all telcos asking them to clear all the ‘AGR-related dues’ without any further delay. It had also told the telcos that their assessment of the dues would not be considered as final, and that they would have to pay in accordance with the top court’s October 24, 2019 AGR judgment.
The notices are now being sent once again since the finance Ministry has asked the DoT to “collect all pending dues to the extent possible” from all companies, telecom ministry officials said.
The SC had, on October 24 last, while upholding the DoT’s definition of AGR, given the licensees three months’ time to pay all the dues which included the principal amount, interest on principal amount, penalty and interest on penalty due to delay in repayment. None of the telcos, however, paid the said dues by the stipulated deadline, in hopes of a bailout package by the DoT. The non-compliance of its orders by companies as well as the DoT notice asking no coercive action against telcos had enraged the SC.
During the final hearing on the AGR issue in March, the DoT had moved a plea urging the SC that telcos impacted by the court’s order be given up to 20 years to complete payment of pending dues as calculated by telecom ministry.
