Supreme Court: Taking a strong note of non-compliance of its order asking telecom companies to pay adjusted gross revenue of Rs 1.47 lakh crore to DoT, a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, JJ has issued contempt notice to the telecom companies. The managing directors of Bharti Airtel , Vodafone, MTNL, BSNL, Reliance Communications, Tata Telecommunication and others have been summoned to the court on March 17.
The Court said that the telecom companies have violated the order passed by this Court in pith and substance as in spite of the dismissal of the Review application, they have not deposited any amount so far.
“Shocked” over the non-compliance of it’s 2019 order, the bench said,
“It appears the way in which things are happening that they have scant respect to the directions issued by this court.”
The Court also issued notice to a DoT Desk Officer who asked the Attorney General to not insist on payment of dues as directed by the Supreme Court. On this, a furious Justice Mishra said,
“A Desk Officer of the Department of Telecommunications has the temerity to pass the order to the effect of issuing a direction to the Accountant General, another Constitutional Authority”
The Desk Officer had asked the Attorney General
“not to insist for any payment pursuant to the order passed by this Court and not to take any coercive steps till further orders.”
The Court said that this kind of order was nothing but a device to scuttle order of the Supreme Court.
Last year, in Union of India v. Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India, 2019 SCC OnLine SC 1393, the bench of Arun Mishra, SA Nazeer and MR Shah, JJ had refused to change the definition of gross revenue as defined in clause 19.1 of the licence agreement granted by the Government of India to the Telecom Service Providers. It had held,
“The definition in agreement is unambiguous, clear, and beyond the pale of doubt, and there is no confusion in the definition of gross revenue, which is the basis for realisation of the licence fee. Licensees have made a futile attempt to wriggle out of the definition in an indirect method, which was rejected directly in the decision of 2011 between the parties and it was held that these very heads form part of gross revenue.”
According to DoT, Bharti Airtel owes around Rs 23,000 crore, Vodafone Idea Rs 19,823 crore and Reliance Communications Rs 16,456 crore.
[Union of India v. Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India, 2020 SCC OnLine SC 182, order dated 14.02.2020]