New Delhi:The government has detached gas utility GAIL India, explorer Oil India and other PSUs from a Supreme Court order that had led to Rs 1.47 lakh crore being sought from telecom firms such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea in past dues, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday.
Following the October 24 order of the Supreme Court asking inclusion of non-telecom revenues for calculating statutory dues such as license fee and spectrum charges of telecom firms, the Department of Telecommunications has sought a cumulative Rs 2.7 lakh crore from GAIL and other non-telecom PSUs.
The demand was challenged by state-owned firms.
"Supreme Court has detached the public sector undertakings (PSUs) from the AGR judgment dated October 24, 2019, and directed them to seek relief from an appropriate forum," Minister of State for Communications Sanjay Dhotre said in a written reply to a question in the Lower House of Parliament.
The DoT had sought Rs 1.83 lakh crore from GAIL and Rs 48,489 crore from OIL by including their revenues from oil and gas business in calculating dues for leasing out surplus bandwidth capacity to third parties. Power Grid Corp was slapped with Rs 21,953.65 crore liability and Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd faced Rs 15,019.97 crore demand. RailTel and Delhi Metro too faced similar demands.
"Public sector undertakings such as GAIL, Oil India, etc represented to Department of Telecom that the AGR judgment is not applicable on them and therefore they do not owe any dues to the Department of Telecom," Dhotre said.
The challenge to such demand was heard by the apex court last month.
Read more:Centre steps up efforts following spread of coronavirus in India
"After the Supreme Court order dated February 14, 2020, the government abides by the orders of Supreme Court," he said.
On February 14, the Supreme Court had pulled up the DoT for not enforcing its October 24 order that gave telcos three months' time to pay dues. Hours later, the DoT sent notices to Airtel and Vodafone Idea asking them to clear dues immediately.
To a separate question, Dhotre said the government has received Rs 15,896.5 crore payment from telecom companies towards AGR liabilities and Rs 1,30,440.4 crore remained to be paid.