Govt takes action, issues demands to recover dues from six telecom companies

Government has taken action and issued regular demands to recover dues from India’s top six telecom operators-Reliance Communications, Tata Telecom, Vodafone, Airtel, Idea and Aircel, who as per a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report this year, understated their revenue by Rs 46,045.75 crore during the four fiscal years running from 2006-07 to 2009-10 and also caused the exchequer a loss of Rs. 12,488.93 crore.

Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar has said that as per the CAG report the shortfall in licence fee amounts to Rs 3,752.37 crore, in spectrum usage charges amounts to Rs 1,460.23 crore and interest on short fall up to March 2015 amounts to Rs 7,276.33 crore on the government exchequer, with the six telecom firms under-invoicing their gross revenues.

The government has issued regular demands for all the four financial years and special audit demands for two financial years 2006-07 and 2007-08, for these two financial years, the CAG had pointed out a short fall of licence fees of Rs 1,269.36 crore but Department of Telecom (DoT) had already issued demands for license fee amounting to Rs 896.07 crore in 2012, based upon the report of special auditors.

As per CAG report, the financial impact due to understatement of revenues are of the order of Rs 3,728.54 crore for Reliance Communications; Rs 3,215.39 crore for Tata Teleservices; Rs 2,651.89 crore for Bharti Airtel; Rs 1,665.39 crore for Vodafone, Rs 964.89 crore for Idea and Rs 262.83 crore for Aircel.