Vodafone Idea has approached the Supreme Court (SC) for filing the review petition on the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) calculation order that SC gave on July 23, 2021. For the unaware, the telcos, including Vodafone Idea (Vi), Bharti Airtel, and Tata Teleservices, had submitted a petition in the apex court to ask the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for reassessing the dues of the operators. The operators had said that the telecom department had made several mistakes while coming out with the final amount of the AGR dues. As per the operators, due to the department’s mistake, the telcos have to pay more money than they are meant to.
Vodafone Idea Said DoT Made Errors of Up to Rs 5,932 Crore
Vodafone Idea (Vi) has claimed that the DoT has made calculation mistakes while assessing the AGR dues. The department has added Rs 5,932 crore extra on the principal amount that Vi had to pay. This has increased the total amount that Vi has to pay significantly because of the addition of penalty, interests, and then interest on the penalty.
All the operators just wanted the DoT to rectify the errors it had made while calculating the AGR dues. But the SC was in no mood to entertain this request of the operators. It is worth noting that since the inception of the AGR drama, the SC has kept it clear that it won’t allow for any sort of reassessment or recalculation of the dues.
This time, the operators aren’t asking for a reassessment of the dues though, they just want the DoT to rectify the errors it has made while coming out with the final amount. There’s a pretty weak chance that Vi will gain anything out of the review petition filed, which is first reported by the Financial Express. But it is expected that Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices will also go ahead with filing the review petition for the same matter. It will be interesting to see how the court will respond to the request of the operators.