Prior to this, DoT had served notices to these operators in this context and is looking to recover Rs 8.23 billion.
As per DoT, these operators misreported their revenues and hence paid lower revenue share during 2006-07 and 2007-08. In fact, DoT had made a presentation to Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and IT, highlighting the irregularities found in the companies? books.
For example, the operators had allegedly not reported Rs 102.68 billion in revenues to the government under various categories of income. DoT also stated that the operators were reporting more revenue in segments that carried lower licence fees.
Further, these companies allegedly did not include the income obtained from the sale of assets such as towers, networks and switches and handsets. Also, DoT has argued that gains from foreign exchange variations, miscellaneous income as well as that from extraordinary income must be added to the total revenues of mobile phone companies, and licence fee and spectrum usage levies be paid on the same.
Net, net, Reliance Communications may be asked to pay about Rs 3.10 billion, Bharti Airtel may have to pay Rs 1.61 billion, Vodafone India may be asked to pay Rs 1.07 billion, TTSL may have to pay Rs 1.79 billion and Idea Cellular, Rs 640 million.
