Bharti, Vodafone yet to submit full info on accounts: Pilot

The government today said leading telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone have not fully complied with the requirements of submitting documents needed for verifying their gross revenues by the government auditor CAG.

"Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone and Tata Teleservices and their group companies have been selected by the CAG of India for the current year. The operators were asked to provide relevant accounting records for three years commencing 2006-07 by DoT," Minister of State for Communications Sachin Pilot said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

Out of these four companies, RCom and TTSL have submitted most of the information, while Vodafone and Bharti Airtel have not fully complied with the requirements, he added.

The Department of Telecom has already conducted special audit on the books of operators like RCom, TTSL and Bharti Airtel to ascertain the correctness of gross revenue (GR).

Pilot said, "The CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) has taken up the verification of correctness of the GR computed by the service providers for calculation of revenue share to be credited to government accounts."

This exercise is only for the verification of correctness of the GR and not the audit of accounts of private telecom companies, he added.

"CAG proposes to take up the verification of the correctness of the revenue of all operators in a phased manner," Pilot said.

He added, however, that the issue regarding the powers of the CAG to audit the account books of private telecom firms is sub-judice and any change in the agreement may be considered only after the issue is finally adjudicated upon.

Private companies are against the prospect of CAG looking into their books of account.