Vodafone Idea (Vi) reached the Supreme Court on May 15 with a fresh petition seeking a waiver of over Rs 30,000 crore in Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues towards interest, penalty, and interest on penalty. The telecom sector giant, via its lawyer Mukul Rohatgi, requested the matter to be heard on an urgent basis before a bench headed by newly appointed Chief Justice of India BR Gavai, the Economic Times reported. The apex court is set to hear the matter on May 19.
The move by the company comes at a time when it’s struggling with its financial health.
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi argued that to maintain competition in the telecom sector, Vodafone Idea’s survival is important. He also highlighted that the company is facing financial issues and is unable to manage them on its own and mentioned that the central government now has a 49% stake in the firm.
The development by Vi comes after facing a series of rejections of review petitions by the Supreme Court in February this year. In the review petition, the telecom operators challenged SC’s 2021 decision, but the top court upheld the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) calculation of AGR dues. The court said no correction of alleged arithmetical errors is required.
The top court’s move to uphold the 2021 decision came as a severe setback for telecom companies like Vi and Bharti Airtel, who were eyeing to get their AGR dues burden reduced.
Apart from this, Vi informed the DoT that it cannot provide a Rs 6,091 crore bank guarantee or make a Rs 5,493 crore cash payment related to 2015 spectrum auction dues. The financially strained company has requested DoT to provide it relief in case the government plans on taking “any coercive action”.
