Kapil Sibal, Minster for Communications and IT, has approved the Department of Communications’ (DoT) proposal to levy penalties on operators for understating their revenues and thereby paying lower licence fee to the government, say news reports.
Also, the Ministry of Law has already approved DoT’s plans to issue showcause notice to these operators.
DoT is likely to recover penalties amounting to Rs 8.23 billion from five operators. Operators including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Reliance Communications (RCOM), Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) and Idea Cellular reportedly understated their revenues by 102.68 billion between 2006-07 and 2007-08.
Earlier, following an external audit ordered by the government on telecom operators in 2009, DoT had sent notices to these five operators for paying penalty for underreporting their revenues. As per DoT’s estimates RCOM and TTSL will have to pay Rs 31.10 billion and Rs 1.79 billion as penalties. Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular will have to pay penalties amounting to Rs 1.61 billion, Rs 1.07 billion and Rs 0.64 billion, respectively.
