Govt should bring legislation to resolve AGR crisis: Harish Salve

The government may not have any other option but to bring in a legislation to resolve the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) crisis and prevent operators from shutting down, given the Supreme Court’s recent observations, senior advocate Harish Salve said. Speaking to ET Now’s Nayantara Rai, Salve described as “illegal” and “overreach” any move by the top court to send company executives to jail for non-payment. Edited excerpts:

It was a big day at the Supreme Court (in the AGR case)…
There is a dispute between A and B, i.e., the government and the private telecom operators, that dispute gets resolved. The government gets a judgement in its favour. Now, as decree holder, if the government wants to hold back enforcing its decree, I do not know why it should not be open to the government, especially when they are coming in and explaining to the court that there is good reason to do so. This problem has now possibly reached a stage where anything short of a legislation is not going to resolve this.


So you are saying the way out could perhaps only be a piece of legislation?
I would not like to comment on what can or cannot be done…I believe if you shut down (one of) the three big telecom companies, there will be a lot of people who will not be able to access the telecom system…that is more important than throwing people in jail. And the second, you may say I will wind up a company…but to throw people in jail for non- payment, this I think is overreach by the Supreme Court, and this practice has to stop. The Supreme Court is created to protect people’s liberty…The Supreme Court unfortunately seems to be becoming the first for damaging liberties. Under which law will they send people to jail?

In my personal view…it is not just wrong, it is illegal…It is wrong on principle and it sends a very wrong message out of the court.

Why has the AGR matter blown up to this level?
Personally, I have always felt that…the government’s claim on merits was right…I have a more fundamental objection to a situation where the court starts dictating to the government what they need to do, where the government is acting in larger interest in the case of an economic slowdown…whether the 2012 telecom judgement, the worst was the coal judgement…the Supreme Court was partly responsible for the economic slowdown in India… acting in a manner completely oblivious to economic reality and oblivious to the fact that it is primarily the government’s job to run the country.