AGR dues payable by telcos can't be subject matter of any future litigation: SC

The Adjusted Gross Revenue AGR related dues payable by telecom majors including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel cannot be a subject matter of any future litigation the Supreme Court has saidA bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao stated this while dismissing the plea of telcos seeking rectification of alleged errors in the calculation of AGRThe top court said the dispute relating to AGR has been pending in courts for a very long period of time and the dues payable by TSPs Telecom Service Providers cannot be the subject matter of any future litigationIt said there is no room for any doubt from the perusal of the earlier judgement dated September 1 2020 with respect to this court entertaining any application for altering the AGR dues of the TSPs The court said that issues concerning the ambit of proceedings under Section 18 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 in relation to spectrum the manner in which payment has to be made by and liabilities apportioned between the TSPs in case of spectrum sharing and spectrum trading with which we are not concerned in these Applications were also dealt with in its judgment dated September 1 2020The telecom companies had pleaded before the apex court that arithmetical errors in the calculation be rectified and claimed there were cases of duplication of entries Though these applications appear to be innocuous at first blush the end result of the relief sought by the applicants in the guise of correction or rectification of the defects or arithmetical errors in the calculation of AGR dues would be recalculation which would amount to the AGR dues as specified in the order of this Court dated July 20 2020 being alteredThe dispute relating to AGR dues had remained pending in courts for a very long period of time and bearing this in mind this Court was at pains to emphasise at the cost of repetition that the AGR dues payable by TSPs cannot be the subject matter of any future litigation the bench also comprising justices SA Nazeer and MR Shah saidAlso Read Supreme Court dismisses telecom companies plea seeking correction in AGR calculationThe apex court said the order dated July 20 2020 makes it clear that there is no scope for any recalculationrecomputation of AGR dues Even at the time of passing of the order dated July 20 2020 an attempt was made to seek recalculation and reassessment as recorded in the order which was rejected by this Court outright the bench saidThe top court in September last year had given a time period of 10 years to telecom service providers struggling to pay Rs 93520 crores of AGRrelated dues to clear their outstanding amount to the government During the hearing on the applications on July 19 the bench had referred to an earlier order passed by the apex court in the matter and observed that it said no reassessment of AGRrelated dues can be doneOne of the lawyers representing a telecom firm had contended that they were not blaming the Department of Telecommunications DoT for it as there are arithmetical entries and they want to place the entries before the department so that they can reconsider it In its September last year order the apex court had said that telecom operators shall make the payment of 10 per cent of the total dues as demanded by the DoT by March 31 2021 and the rest amount to be paid in yearly installments commencing from April 1 2021 to March 31 2031The top court which had held that demand raised by the DoT in respect of AGR dues will be final had said there shall be no dispute raised by the telcos and there shall not be any reassessment The apex court had in October 2019 delivered its verdict on the AGR issue The DoT in March last year had moved a plea in the top court seeking permission for allowing staggered payment of the dues by the telcos over a period of 20 yearsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever