Notices Likely To Five Telecom Operators To Recover Rs 2,578 Crore
The Department of Telecom will issue notices to five telecom operators.
The Department of Telecommunications will issue notices to five wireless carriers, including Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd., Telenor and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., to recover Rs 2,578 crore after the national auditor red-flagged underreporting of revenues by the firms.
The demand will be raised after reconciling the accounts, an official source said.
The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report tabled in Parliament on Dec. 19 said Tata Teleservices, Telenor, Videocon Telecom, Qaudrant (a Videocon Group firm) and Reliance Jio understated revenues by over Rs 14,800 crore, resulting in a shortfall of nearly Rs 2,578 crore to the exchequer.
The CAG report said the government was paid Rs 1,015 crore less in licence fee, Rs 511.5 crore less in spectrum usage charge, and Rs 1,052 crore less as interest applicable on delay in payment.
The government’s collection from Tata Teleservices is short by Rs 1,893.6 crore, and by Rs 603.8 crore, Rs 48 crore, Rs 26.6 crore and Rs 6.8 crore for Telenor, Videocon, Quadrant and Reliance Jio, respectively, for licence fee, spectrum usage charge and applicable interest charges, it said.
The notices are expected to be sent to telecom operators in January, the source said.
The CAG findings are based on the audit of Tata Teleservices and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd. from 2010-11 to 2014-15; Quadrant Televentures (2006-07 to 2014- 15); Videocon Telecom (2009-10 to 2014-15); Telenor (2009-10 to 2014-15) and Reliance Jio Infocomm from 2012-13 to 2014-15.
Videocon Telecom, Telenor (Telewings) and Tata Teleservices sold their mobile businesses to Bharti Airtel, while Quadrant shut down its operations.
CAG observed that telecom operators deducted discounts offered to dealers and customers; free talktime; interest earned from investments and some asset sales from their gross revenue. These should have been part of the adjusted gross revenue (revenue earned from telecom services) for calculation of licence fee and spectrum usage charges, it said.
The auditor said these expenses are in the nature of marketing spends and cannot be deducted from revenue meant for calculating the government's share. It found that Tata Teleservices had written off bad debt that resulted in understatement of its gross revenue by Rs 1,026 crore.
Unitech Wireless transferred its mobile business to Telenor's Indian arm Telewing Communications Ltd. at a profit of Rs 251.5 crore in 2013-14, but this profit was not included for computing revenue share.
Most of the deductions considered by the CAG for computing revenue of telecom operators are sub judice.