Kapl Sibal, Minister of Communications and IT has given the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) the go-ahead to issue show-cause notices to Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) and Reliance Communications (RCOM).
These operators came under DoT?s scanner for allegedly misreporting their revenues and hence paying lower revenue share during 2006-07 and 2007-08.
It is believed that RCOM will have to pay penalties to the tune of 5.51 billion, Bharti Airtel may have to pay Rs 2.92 billion, Vodafone, Rs 2.54 billion, Idea Cellular, Rs 1.13 billion and TTSL, Rs 2.73 billion.
Prior to this, DoT has made a presentation to Sibal 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.
