Centre challenges TDSAT order in SC

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging TDSAT’s order which had said that the income from dividends and interest on savings, capital gains as well as benefits from foreign exchange should not be a part of the adjusted gross revenue(AGR) of telcom companies.

Under the National Telecom Policy, operators have to pay 15% of their revenue to telecom department as revenue share or licence fee. The petition, filed through the DoT, seeking a stay on the tribunal’s order, came up before a bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhan.

However, Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium on behalf of DoT did not press for an early hearing saying it was a statutory appeal. He requested the bench to post the matter for hearing on November 19, the actual date of listing.

The Tribunal’s ruling in August had excluded dividend, interest income among others from telecom companies’ AGR for calculation of licence fee to the government.

However, it had included income earned from telecom handsets given to subscribers bundled with their services in AGR for the purpose of licence fee. Besides, income earned from property rent, sale or lease of telecom towers, dark fibre line were also included in cellular operators’ AGRs.

TDSAT had passed the judgement on a petition filed by Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India challenging regulator TRAI’s recommendations to include such incomes in AGR.

The tribunal had rejected TRAI’s suggestion to implement its recommendation on the AGR from a prospective date and directed that this order would be effective on telecom operators from the date of appeal before it.