It looks like even Bharti Airtel won’t leave the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues case so lightly. The company has moved to the Supreme Court (SC) and filed a review petition against the order, which the same court had announced last month. The SC had denied the telcos’ requests for asking the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to rectify the errors that have been made while calculating the total AGR dues amount. Thus, following in the footsteps of Vodafone Idea (Vi), Bharti Airtel has filed a review petition in the court to seek justice.
Bharti Airtel Shouldn’t Leave the Matter Easily
It is great to see that the telco is not leaving Vodafone Idea alone in the matter. Vi had filed for the review petition, and now Airtel has done the same, notes ET Telecom. The AGR dues which have been wrongly calculated have additional interests and more penalties which has surged the total amount that the operators had to pay in the first play by a huge margin. Thus the operators had earlier filed a petition at the SC to push DoT to rectify the errors. Vodafone Idea had said that it wants to communicate with the SC that it only wants the errors to be rectified, nothing else. Vi must be very agitated from the decision of the SC as it had earlier said that it is “inconceivable” that the SC is not allowing for the mistakes to be corrected. Bharti Airtel must be feeling the same agitation as even it has to pay thousands of crores extra because of the calculation mistake that the DoT had made. It would be great if the SC rules in favour of the telcos looking at the review petition hearing. It will ensure that a huge amount of debt is cleared from the shoulders of both Vi and Airtel. Further, it will attract new investors in a jiffy to the industry.
