DoT withdraws AGR dues demand notices on GAIL & Power Grid

Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications and Government of India has withdrawn provisional demand notices issued on GAIL Limited and Power Grid Corporation of India Limited. The dues were related to adjusted gross revenue (AGR) imposed over the telecom revenues earned by these companies.

Similarly, GAIL had received provisional assessment orders towards annual licence fees in respect to IP-II licence for several financial years with the total outstanding amount of Rs 1,83,076 crore, including interests and penalty computed on its entire revenue.

DoT, through its assessment order in respect of National Long Distance (NLD) licence, for FY 2006-07 to 2009-10 had asked Power Grid to pay Rs 13,613.66 crore on account of the licence fee for FY 2006-07 to 2009-10 along with interest, penalty and interest on the penalty. It had also done provisional assessments for FY 2014-15 to 2017-18 as well as reassessed for FY 2012-13 and 2013-14 and raised additional demand to the tune of Rs 21,954 crore, in addition to non-telecom revenue as miscellaneous income in AGR.

Oil India had also received demand notices for the period from FY 2007-08 to FY 2018-19, amounting to over Rs 48,000 crore, including licence fee, penalties and interest. DoT has withdrawn the demand notices issued to Oil India too.

As per Supreme Court, DoT had misused its judgement related to AGR dues payable by the telecom operators. These three PSUs did not fit in the definition of AGR as their main revenue was not generated from telecom services and hence, the notices had to be withdrawn by DoT.

With this withdrawal, no dues remain pending to DoT by Oil India, GAIL and Power Grid Corporation in the matter of AGR.

On Thursday, in the morning session, GAIL was trading down by 2.5 per cent, Power Grid was trading down by 2.4 per cent and Oil India was trading down by 2.7 per cent.