Call on separate civil suit on payment of AGR dues: DoT in ‘wait & watch’ mode

The DoT will have to move a separate civil suit seeking the apex court’s directions on what it should do going ahead, if it seeks to recover the dues from all the companies, the officials further said.

The Department is also likely to adopt a “wait and watch” stance, as the SC has agreed to hear next week the telecom operators’ plea seeking permission to negotiate with the DoT on payment schedule, one of the sources quoted above said.

According to October 24, 2019 judgment of the SC, both telcos and non-telecom companies were required to clear their AGR dues within three months, the deadline for which expires on Thursday.

Of all the telcos which were saddled by the SC’s October 24 judgment on AGR, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea face the biggest liabilities. While Vodafone Idea may have to shell out as much as Rs 53,000 crore, Bharti Airtel will have to pay nearly Rs 35,590 crore.

Though both the companies have raised adequate funds from the market to fund the payment of AGR dues, it is likely that Vodafone Idea will wait till its plea in the Supreme Court is heard, company sources said.

“We have approached the Supreme Court and they have agreed to hear us. Now, if the matter is sub-judice, where does the question of payment come up? We will wait till we are heard by the court,” one of the sources said.

Vodafone Idea refused to comment on the issue, and did not respond to the queries sent by The Indian Express till the time of press.

Meanwhile, senior officials of Bharti Airtel were huddled in a meeting till late night, still undecided on the issue. The company too refused to respond to queries till the time of press.

Both Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel had approached the apex court on Monday seeking its permission to “work out feasible terms mutually with DoT (Department of Telecommunications)” to ensure that they remain a “going concern”.

Vodafone Idea had, in its plea, said that it was “facing a huge financial stress and is not in a position to make either up front payment of the amounts due or provide any financial bank guarantees to securitise the amounts due”.

The telecom operator had, in its plea, also said that while its total cumulative losses over the past ten years were nearly Rs 55,000 crore, it had suffered a total loss of Rs 50, 898 crore in the July-September quarter alone in 2019, on account of factoring in of AGR. That loss had “eroded the net worth and the cash balance”, the company had said in its plea.

On the other hand, Bharti Airtel, in its plea, stressed upon the larger ramifications, the financial viability of the companies impacted by the AGR judgment, and large scale job losses which could happen if no relief was given.

”The payment of the due amounts, totalling to over thousands of crores, without proper assessment and financial calculations, and appropriate time period for payment, will not only cause irreparable damage to the appellants (Bharti Airtel), but to the telecom industry at large leading to possible disruption of a public utility service owing to bad financial position of telecom companies,” the Bharti Airtel plea read.