SC adjourns plea of Vodafone additional AGR case hearing to October 27

The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned the hearing to October 27, in a plea by Vodafone Idea seeking relief from additional adjusted gross revenue (AGR) demands raised by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for the period up to FY 2016-17.

A bench of Chief Justice of India BR Gavai, Justices K Vinod Chandran, adjourned the matter after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, requested the apex court to defer the hearing.

Mehta said the matter be posted on Thursday or the first day of reopening of the court after the Diwali break.

"Keep it on the first day after court reopens after Diwali," the bench said.

The plea of Vodafone sought directions to quash the additional demand of AGR dues, saying that it belonged to the pre-2016-17 period that had been settled by the Supreme Court's earlier ruling.

It further sought to direct the telecom department to comprehensively re-assess and reconcile all AGR dues based on the 'Deduction Verification Guidelines' issued on February 3, 2020.

"The action of DoT was completely unjust, unfair and arbitrary in seeking to raise additional demands despite the Supreme Court having crystallised the AGR dues and not carrying out a complete re-assessment inasmuch as, while DoT is at liberty to raise additional demands, the petitioner is not being permitted to seek correction of assessments made by DoTwhich have been thrust upon the petitioner," the petition stated.

The telecom company claimed that errors in computation have led to duplication of entries, with certain amounts added more than once.

By the October 2019 judgement, telecoms were asked by the apex court to pay AGR dues.

In September 2020, the Supreme Court granted telecom companies a period of 10 years to clear their pending AGR dues to the Central government, with 10 per cent payment to be made every year.

The deadline given to the telcos for the first instalment was March 31, 2021.

In July 2021, the Supreme Court had dismissed the plea of telecom majors, including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, seeking correction of errors in the calculation of AGR dues payable by them as per the top court's 2019 judgement.