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Relief for Vodafone Idea as Supreme Court agrees to hear plea on AGR demand
Vodafone Idea's share price surged as much as 12.35% after Supreme Court agrees to hear fresh AGR plea, even as Sensex traded 500 points lower.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a fresh plea of Vodafone Idea Ltd. to quash the government's AGR demands for the period until 2016-17.
Vodafone Idea's share price surged as much as 12.35% on the news, even as the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex traded 0.6% lower.
On Friday, a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justices K. Vinod Chandran and N.V. Anjaria fixed the plea for consideration on next Friday, 26 September, after taking note of submissions of senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Vodafone Idea and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta who represented the Government of India.
“We will keep it on Friday,” Gavai said.
On 8 September, Vodafone Idea filed a fresh plea seeking a direction to the Department of Telecommunications to “comprehensively re-assess and reconcile all AGR dues for the period up to FY 2016-17 following the ‘Deduction Verification Guidelines’, ” dated 3 February 2020.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had refused to review its 2021 order that rejected pleas of Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel Ltd. for the rectification of alleged errors in calculation of adjusted gross revenue dues payable by them. The telecom companies had argued that arithmetical errors in the calculation should be rectified as there were cases of duplication of entries.
In September 2020, the Supreme Court fixed a time frame of 10 years for telecom firms struggling to pay ₹93,520 crore of AGR dues to clear their outstanding amount to the government. Telecom operators should make the payment of 10% of the total dues, as demanded by the DoT, by 31 March 2021 and the rest in annual instalments from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2031.
The top court had held DoT's demand with respect to AGR dues as final, and maintained that telecom firms shouldn't dispute the order or file a fresh plea for its re-assessment.
With inputs from PTI.
