New Delhi: Kumar Mangalam Birla, Indian billionaire and chairman Vodafone Idea Ltd, on Tuesday met telecom secretary on issues related to dues pertaining to adjusted gross revenue (AGR).
Details of the meeting were not immediately available as Birla did not respond to queries. "Cannot say anything at the moment," he told reporters after the meeting.
The meeting comes a day after the cash-strapped telecom major made part payment of its dues to the government.
Vodafone Idea’s board on Monday decided to immediately pay ₹2,500 crore to the department of telecommunications (DoT) and pay another ₹1,000 crore before the end of the week. “The board will take further stock of the situation to see how additional payments can be made," Vodafone Idea said in an exchange filing. The company owes about ₹50,000 crore to the DoT, according to government estimates.
Bharti Airtel also paid ₹10,000 crore of its total dues of ₹35,586 crore to the DoT on Monday.
On 14 February, the top court pulled up telecom operators along with officials of DoT for the delay in payments, in contravention of its 24 October order. It directed the telcos to pay more than ₹1 trillion in AGR dues by 17 March.
The original payment deadline was 23 January.
The worst hit is Vodafone Idea, given that it only had ₹12,530 crore of cash and equivalent reserves as of December 2019, while bearing a gross debt of ₹1.2 trillion.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a plea by Vodafone Idea, seeking directions to DoT to not to take any coercive steps for recovery of dues, the company said. It also sought directions for DoT to not encash the company’s bank guarantees.
Vodafone Idea’s ability to continue as a going concern is now dependent on a positive outcome of its modification plea filed in the apex court, it had said in an exchange filing on Saturday.
After a 14-year-long legal battle, in October the apex court upheld the government’s broader definition of revenue on which it calculates levies on telecom operators. Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices Ltd last month filed modification pleas seeking more time to pay AGR-related dues.
