The Supreme Court has dismissed petitions filed by telecom service providers companies against its October 24, 2019, order directing them to pay Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) of about `92,000 crore to the Department of Telecom (DoT). A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna and B R Gavai that heard the plea by providers, including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, rejected the prayer to hear it in open court. Curative petitions are usually taken up by judges in their chambers. In the August 30 order, which was made available on Thursday, the court said, “We have gone through the Curative Petitions and the connected documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra vs Ashok Hurra”. The Supreme Court developed the concept of curative petition in the Hurra case to provide an opportunity for those whose grievance is not addressed in the review petition to approach the court one more time. Allowing a DoT appeal, the Supreme Court on October 24, 2019, paved the way for the recovery of the AGR dues amounting to about `1.6 lakh crore from the telecom companies, upholding DoT’s stand on what constitutes AGR as provided in clause 19.1 of the telecom licence agreement with the service providers. Though the Centre urged the court to allow the telecom companies, which pleaded financial difficulties to pay the dues over 20 years, the SC by order dated September 1, 2020, permitted them to pay the money over 10 years, starting April 1, 2021, with 10 per cent payment to be made by March 31 every year. In an order dated July 23, 2021, the Supreme Court also dismissed applications by telecom companies seeking correction of what they claimed were “arithmetic errors” in the calculation of the AGR. After their review plea against the October 2019 judgement was dismissed, they filed the curative petition but failed to get any relief. The question of AGR has been a point of dispute since 2003 with the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) ruling that some of the heads of revenue would not fall under AGR. However, the top court said that it had in a 2011 judgment ruled that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Tribunal do not have the jurisdiction to exclude from its purview, certain items of revenue, which were included in the definition of AGR. “TRAI and Tribunal had no jurisdiction to decide on the validity of the definition AGR in the licence agreement,” the SC had said.
