Non-telecom public sector units (PSUs) including GAIL India, Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL), Oil India Limited (OIL), Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and RailTel are filing separate applications in the Supreme Court (SC) seeking clarification on applicability of their October 24, 2019 order on payment of licence fee dues.
In its modificatory petition to SC, OIL has stated that it earned cumulative revenue of Rs 14.7 million from leasing of spare bandwidth capacity on which all applicable licence fee and other statutory dues were paid regularly as per licence terms. However, OIL has been served a notice of Rs 480 billion including licence fee, penalties and interest by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). The licence fee is based on its entire revenue which also includes sale of oil and gas.
Additionally, GAIL, PGCIL, DMRC and Rail-Tel are likely to file applications soon.
The cumulative dues of non-telecom companies stand at Rs 3 trillion exceeding the dues of about 15 telecom companies together at Rs 1.47 trillion.
