The Indian government and UK-based telecom operator Vodafone Plc have mutually agreed to extend the deadline for appointing the third arbitrator to resolve the latter?s Rs 200 billion-tax dispute case in India. The deadline for finalising the name of third arbitrator in the Vodafone tax dispute case was September 17, 2014.
For resolving the tax dispute, the government had appointed former Chief Justice of India, R C Lahoti as its arbitrator while Canadian lawyer Yves Fortier was selected as Vodafone’s arbitrator. Vodafone International Holdings, in April 2014, had served an arbitration notice under the Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement (BIPA) between India and the Netherlands to resolve the tax dispute. Recently, the government had appointed New York-based law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle as its counsel for the case.
The tax dispute case relates to capital gains that accrued to Vodafone following its acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa’s stake in Hutchison Essar in 2007. Though Vodafone had received a favourable judgement regarding its tax case in the Supreme Court of India, the former government amended the tax laws with retrospective effect to recover the dues from Vodafone. While the basic tax demand was Rs 79.90 billion, the total outstanding, including interest and penalty, is estimated at Rs 200 billion.
