Vodafone Idea on Tuesday paid the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) Rs 3042.80 crore for airwaves bought in the auctions of 2014. The payment comes even as the telecom firm faces balance adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues of Rs53,500 crore.

ET wrote in its Tuesday's edition that the telco will be paying its spectrum dues today - which is also the deadline for the payments. Shares of Vodafone Idea were down by 0.58% at Rs 3.43 in the afternoon trading hours on the BSE on Tuesday.

This payment is important because defaulting would make the company vulnerable since it cannot risk getting its bank guarantees invoked by DoT.

Vodafone Idea has yet to pay the telecom department AGR dues of around Rs 53,500 crore. It has so far paid Rs 3,500 crore and is hoping for some relief, without which it has warned it may have to shut operations.

Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio also need to pay by Tuesday about Rs 2,000 crore and about Rs 1,000 crore, respectively, toward similar payments.