Supreme Court slams DoT, telecom companies over AGR dues; Here's what experts say on today's hearing

However, the court agreed to hear a plea by the solicitor general Tushar Mehta seeking "reasonable time" to make the payments. This will be heard in the next two weeks.

Justice Arun Mishra observed that telecom companies are violating the order and accused them of trying to hoodwink the court.

So, how much have the telecom companies paid and what is the pending amount?

Bharti Airtel is facing a demand of nearly Rs 44,000 crore. The company's self-assessment pegged the dues at just over Rs 13,000 crore and it has so far made a payment of just over Rs 18,000 crore. That leaves Airtel with nearly Rs 26,000 crore in dues yet to be paid.

For Vodafone-Idea, the demand is for more than Rs 53,000 crore. The company's self-assessment pegged the dues at just over Rs 21,500 crore and it has paid Rs 3,500 crore so far, so that leaves the company with significant dues that are yet to be paid.

Tata Teleservices is facing a demand of just under Rs 17,000 crore. It has paid just over Rs 4,000 crore so far and has claimed that its self-assessment pegged the dues at just under Rs 2,200 crore. Therefore, it has to pay the balance of Rs 12,600 crore.

The now defunct Reliance Communications of Anil Ambani Group is facing a demand of over Rs 25,000 crore and it has made a payment of just Rs 4 crore so far.

Overall, telecom companies are facing total dues to the tune of Rs 1.7 lakh crore, and they are yet to pay over Rs 1.4 lakh crore.

To discuss the developments and the road ahead for telecom companies, Shereen Bhan spoke to Rajiv Sharma, head of research at SBICAP Securities, Sanjay Kapoor, telecom consultant and R Chandrashekhar, former telecom secretary.

Sharma said: "Even if 20 years staggered payment is allowed, in that case as well Vodafone-Idea doesn't have enough money to invest in telecom capex and reduce the gap between themselves and Bharti or Jio on the 4G side unless this is backed by capital infusion, equity infusion from Birla Group, from Vodafone PLC and that will only happen if the AGR dues are staggered plus the TRAI suggests some kind of floor pricing, so unless these two things come together, I don't think the promoters will have any incentive to infuse more capital."

Kapoor said: "I think there is a lot of finality in what got transpired today. The extent to which you can manoeuvre anything going from here is absolutely very tight."

As far as the government is concerned the only play is 20 years and 8 percent and whether the court finally finds 20 years to be reasonable or not, he added.

"We will hear in two weeks' time. However given the situation of the telecom companies, clearly I think with some sort of a moratorium and even without a moratorium, I think Bharti Airtel has got a strong balance sheet and they will be able to tide over, although it is lot of unhappiness for any operator because the money that should be pumped into creating customer experience and competitiveness will go into paying fines and past dues. So that from a telecom perspective cannot be welcomed by anybody."

Chandrashekhar said: "Clearly the court was not amused by the idea of re-computing the dues. Clearly they were not amused by the fact that the DoT itself which had pursued the legal option for 17 years seemed to be leaning towards permitting some kind of a reassessment."

However, the point is that if at all there was an elbow room ever in the case, it was more with regards to the duration over which this payment would be made and that is the only slight chink in the door which the Supreme Court has left open on Wednesday and on which they will rule after 2 weeks, Chandrashekhar added.