Now, CAG to audit telcos' books

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) will soon audit the accounts of telecom players -- even if it is for the past 10 years -- to ensure that the operators are sharing the licence fee with the government as per the norms.

This comes on the heels of the Department of Telecom (DoT) appointing private auditors to look into the books of telcos after it was detected that some of the operators were diverting revenues in segments which attracted lower licence fee.

Mobile services attract licence fee ranging from 6-10 per cent depending on the area of operation while for STD services the licence fee is less than the cellular services and some of the firms were found to have shown higher revenues in long distance segment instead of the mobile services.

The new structured auditing programme for telecom companies is likely to come by mid-December, a senior CAG official said.

"We will do more structured audit of telecom players for the revenue sharing part with the government. We have to see if the government is getting its due share," the official explained.

Among private telecom players, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar (earlier Hutchinson Max then Huchtison Essar) are the players who have completed 10 years of operations.