Following the Supreme Court order on adjusted gross revenue (AGR), the government had also issued notices to non-telecom PSUs that had some form of telecom licence to pay their AGR dues, which as per the government, comes up to over Rs 2 lakh crore. However, companies like GAIL and PowerGrid have said that there is no question of paying because they owe nothing.
These two are public sector enterprises had purchased spectrum, but never floated a separate company to handle the telecom business The amount involved here is as much as Rs 1.73 lakh crore from GAIL and around Rs 22,000 crore from Powergrid.
Powergrid Corporation took the licence and says earned a revenue (AGR) of Rs 3,566 crore. Powergrid claims it had a telecom revenue of Rs 742 crore on which it has to pay Rs 59 crore which it has paid and the story should end there. DoT reckons, the AGR stands at Rs 1,25,855 crore for Powergrid and it is liable to pay around Rs 22,000 crore.
The same is the case with GAIL. The petroleum PSU says not more than Rs 35 crore can be attributed to its revenue on account of telecom business. It says it owes not a penny to DoT.
The problem for the government is it cannot be seen to be taking different positions for public sector companies and the private sector in such cases. The private players have already gone back to the Supreme Court for a review. Of course, their review is for waiver of interest, penalty and interest on penalty which they feel constitute 75% of the demand raised.
If the government accepts their explanation to waive off dues, it may have to do the same for telcos such as Airtel, Vodafone, others.