Telcos have arrears from licence fee, spectrum charges: Ravi Shankar Prasad
New Delhi: Telecom companies have arrears, including that from licence fee and spectrum charges, to the tune of Rs 49,988.44 crore, Parliament was informed on Friday.
"The total amount under litigation is Rs 32,614.45 crore out of total arrears of Rs 49,988.44 crore. The cases are being defended vigorously in TDSAT, various high courts and in Hon'ble Supreme Court," Minister of Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha on Friday.
The demands are issued as per the terms and conditions of the Licence agreements to realise the revenue in time, he added. Of the total arrears, Rs 16,200.76 crore was on account of licence fee, Rs 24,797.68 crore in spectrum charges, Rs 7,328.75 crore in Electro Magnetic Frequency (EMF) penalty and Rs 1,658 crore in Customer Application Form (CAF) penalty, the Minister said.
Also, MNP testing fee arrears stood at Rs 0.49 crore and EMR testing fee arrears were to the tune of Rs 2.76 crore. State-run telecom operator BSNL accounted for the highest arrear at Rs 11,193.91 crore, followed by Bharti Airtel/Bharti Hexacom at Rs 8,066.85 crore and Vodafone at Rs 7,693.73 crore. The other state-run operator, MTNL, had arrears of Rs 3,475.53 crore.
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