Vodafone Idea files curative plea against Supreme Court verdict dismissing telcos plea for recalculation of AGR dues

Vodafone Idea (VI) has filed a curative petition against the Supreme Court judgment that had dismissed pleas by telecom companies seeking correction of errors in Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues payable by them.

The plea was mentioned by Senior Advocate Harish Salve before a Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.

"This Court has said there are arithmetical errors and this is a curative plea," Salve said.

The CJI then asked how long the arguments would take, to which Salve responded that it would only take a day.

Accordingly, the CJI affirmed that the papers of the matter will be circulated.

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 first installment was March 31, 2021.

The companies had submitted that the Department of Telecom (DoT) had made arithmetical errors in calculation of AGR dues and wanted the Court to allow rectification of errors.

The total liability on Vodafone-Idea was ₹58,254 crore, while Bharti Airtel was to pay ₹43,980 crore.

Vodafone-Idea's own estimate earlier had put the dues at ₹21,533 crore, but the top court had barred telcos from self-assessing their dues, and went with the DoT’s claimed amounts.

The DoT, as per its calculation, sought AGR dues of ₹58,400 crore.

On July 23, 2021, the apex court had dismissed the pleas by telecom companies Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Tata seeking correction of errors in calculation of AGR dues payable by them as per the top court's October 2019 judgment.

A Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Abdul Nazeer and MR Shah had noted that though the plea by telcos appeared to be innocuous at first blush, they had effectively sought reassessment of dues in the guise of rectification of errors.