A meeting of the Digital Communications Commission (DCC), the top executive decision-making body of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), ended inconclusively on Friday as the members could not arrive at a decision on what or whether any relief should be given to telcos facing adjusted gross revenue (AGR) payouts, sources in the know of the development said. The meeting, which was headed by Telecom Secretary Anshu Prakash, will be held again at a later date when the final reconciled details of how much each AGR each telco has to pay come to the ministry. Earlier this week, the DoT asked all the telcos to submit documents supporting their calculation of AGR, which is much lower than the numbers arrived at by the ministry. “This exercise will help us run a time-bound check and test for the AGR dues that are being deposited so far. We have asked them to send the supporting documents as soon as possible,” a senior DoT official had then said. As of last Thursday, Bharti Airtel had paid Rs 10,000 crore of the over Rs 36,000 crore it owed to the DoT, while Vodafone Idea paid Rs 3,500 crore of the Rs 53,000-crore AGR dues it owed. Vodafone Idea paid another Rs 1,000 crore on Thursday. The Rs 3,500 crore paid by Vodafone Idea is half of its self-assessed AGR principal. Tata Teleservices, which has so far paid Rs 2,197 crore, will be sent another notice in a couple of days, which will seek for payment of the rest of the AGR dues, a DoT official had said on the condition of anonymity. The talks of a possible bailout package being offered to the telecom companies started doing rounds after Bharti Airtel founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal and Vodafone Idea chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla met Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in successive days. Mittal had met Prasad at least two times in the past two weeks, in addition to meeting Sitharaman. Both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are under pressure to complete the remainder of their AGR payments before March 17. The deadline is the next date of hearing in the Supreme Court, which had, on February 14, slammed the DoT as well as the companies for failing to make any payments before the stipulated deadline of January 23.
