TDSAT dismisses BSNL's petition on ADC

Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) today rejected a bunch of petitions by state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) challenging removal of access deficit charge (ADC), a levy paid by private telecom operators for funding the PSU's rural and remote operations.

Dismissing all the three petitions, a TDSAT bench, headed by Justice Arun Kumar, said, BSNL has no legal right to claim ADC from the private telecom operators and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has rightly terminated it.

“We hold that BSNL has no legal right to ADC. ADC has rightly been designed as a depleting regime ...Rightly terminated in the year 2008-09 and the manner of calculating ADC each year was fair and reasonable, given the facts available with Trai,” said the TDSAT.

Trai abolished ADC in 2008-09. In the two fiscals previous to that, the ADC was reduced. In 2007-08, the regulator had reduced ADC by 37 per cent to Rs 2,000 crore from Rs 3,200 crore.

BSNL challenged Trai's decision in the sectoral tribunal. The tribunal also rejected BSNL's contention that Trai was wrong while calculating ADC and relied on faulty data's. It further said BSNL did not have any reliable data over the quantum of loss suffered by it for its rural obligations.

“Even the government itself stated in Parliament (in 2003) that BSNL does not have required data to calculate ADC due to it or being adjusted by it,” TDSAT said.