Bharti auditors seek extension for submitting report

Auditors Nayak and Kishnadwala, who are doing special audit for telecom major Bharti Airtel, have sought extension from the government by one-and-a-half months to submit the report.

In April, Department of Telecom (DoT) had ordered a special audit on five telecom companies -— Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Essar, Tata Teleservices, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications (RCom)-— to check alleged mis-reporting of revenue to evade taxes and licence fee.

The DoT had written to Bharti earlier asking the company to provide all the required information to the auditor by December 14.

A Bharti spokesperson said, "Till date, very extensive and detailed data have been provided by us to the auditor. Recently, the auditor has sought some additional data, which we are in the process of providing."

A letter by the auditor to DoT stated, "We request you to grant us extension of time in submission of the special audit report. The delay has been primarily due to non-receipt of information from the company. Once the information called for is received in entirety to our satisfaction, we expect to complete the verification thereof and submit the report on the special audit within 4-6 weeks from that date."

According to sources, all the auditors have sought extension of time to submit their reports.

The report on RCom, one of the five companies, was submitted to the government last month.

In its communication to Bharti, the DoT said that it has been pointed out by the auditor that despite considerable lapse of time, complete information has not been provided for any of the requisitions till date.