The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on Sunday said it would look into the financial books of leading telecom firms from August 16 to see whether there was any under-reporting of revenues by them, causing a revenue loss to the government on annual licence fees.
“While Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices have submitted their books in full, Vodafone and Airtel have given access to their documents partially,” a government official said.
Leading operators, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Tatas, RCom and state-run BSNL have been asked by the CAG to submit their account books for the last three fiscal years to ensure that they were paying what is due to the government in terms of annual licence fees.
The Supreme Court had, on August 2, asked these telecom firms to give their financials to the CAG within two weeks.
“We will start looking into financial details of these firms from August 16, as these companies will now have to submit their books compulsorily,” the official said.
The CAG had been asked by the Centre to check if there was any under-reporting of revenue for calculating the annual licence fee. However, telecom companies were opposed to this on the ground that they were already scrutinised by the DoT.