Today at 1:30 pm, in a closed court session, the Supreme Court will consider curative petitions pertaining to the AGR matter from Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.
Today, August 30, the telecom behemoths Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea will present their curative petitions to the Supreme Court of India (SC) in the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) issue.
At 1:30 p.m. today, a three-judge Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachu will hear the case. According to the article, there won’t be any public attendance at the closed court session.

Therapeutic Requests
The Department of Telecommunication’s (DoT) order seeking AGR and other non-revenue related dues is supported by CURATIVE PETITIONS filed by Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and other telecom operators, urging the court to reevaluate its 2019 ruling in favor of the DoT’s order.
Telcos assert that DoT applied “arbitrary” penalty amounts because it made “a grave error” in calculating AGR dues.
The determination of what constitutes AGR is crucial to telecom operators’ profitability because they must pay the government an annual licence fee equal to a specific percentage of their adjusted gross revenue.

₹1 trillion in debt for telecom
In September, curative applications were filed by BHARTI ARITEL and VODAFONE IDEA. Their petitions are a response to a September 1, 2020, Supreme Court ruling that mandates telecom companies pay their arrears to the government over a ten-year period.
Notably, telecom operators claimed there were various arithmetic errors totaling more than ₹1 trillion, and the Supreme Court dismissed a motion for adjustments in the demand of AGR dues in July 2021.
In its appeal to the Supreme Court, VODAFONE IDEA expressed worries about its financial situation, claiming that the primary sum was not met by the AGR requests. Vi maintained that when it disputed revenue definitions, it did so in good faith.
The telecom companies were ordered by the Supreme Court of India in 2020 to pay 10% of their outstanding sum in full by March 31, 2021, with the option to make deferred payments until 2031. By March 31st of every year, ten percent of the total was due.
Additionally, the SUPREME COURT had declared that there would be no AGR dues revaluation and that default would incur interest, penalties, and accusations of contempt of court.
Airtel’s own estimate was ₹13,004 crore, but the DoT determined that the company owed ₹43,980 crore in AGR dues. The DoT demanded ₹58,254 crore from Vodafone Idea, while the company estimated ₹21,533 crore. Tata Teleservices calculated ₹2,197 crore, but was confronted with a demand of ₹16,798 crore.

Conflict regarding definition
The National Telecom Policy (NTP) of 1999, which permitted telecom businesses to pay their license and spectrum costs as a percentage of their yearly income, is where the problem originated. The DoT pushed for a more inclusive definition of gross revenue that covered all forms of revenue, while telecom companies contended that AGR should only include money from telecommunication activities. Nevertheless, disagreements emerged regarding the concept of gross revenue.
According to a 2015 decision by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), AGR should only be determined using money received from the provision of telecommunication services.
AGR should instead be determined by a company’s overall revenue, regardless of its source, the Supreme Court declared in 2019. This decision allowed the Center to recoup almost ₹92,000 crore from the corporations.