Oil India Ltd. on Wednesday said it had filed a petition before the Supreme Court against its October 24 order with regard to adjusted gross revenue (AGR) that resulted in the Department of Telecom raising a demand for over ₹48,000 crore in licence fee, penalties and interest from the state-owned firm.
“On 22nd January 2020, OIL has filed a clarificatory/modificatory petition before the Hon’ble Supreme Court against its order and next course of action will be based on the outcome of the petition,” the company said in a statement.
The PSU clarified that it obtained a National Long Distance Service Licence (NLD Licence) to establish ‘Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA)’ for control, management and protection of Oil India’s pipeline network used for transportation of crude oil, natural gas and petroleum products.
It added that NLD licence was predominantly used for the SCADA system and only the spare bandwidth capacity was leased out to other telecom operators. “As per the licence terms, licence fee is to be paid on Gross Total Revenue from services provided under the NLD licence. Since the award of the NLD licence, the cumulative revenue of ₹1.47 crore was earned by OIL from leasing of spare bandwidth capacity on which all applicable licence fee and other statutory dues as per licence terms has been paid by OIL regularly,” it added.
Following the SC judgment, DoT had issued demand notices to OIL seeking payment of licence fee on total reported revenue, including revenue from sale of crude oil, natural gas etc., which neither relates to the NLD licence nor can be treated as supplementary/ value added services related to the NLD licence.
“Till date, OIL has received demand notices for the period from FY 2007-08 to FY 2018-19 amounting to over ₹48,000 crore including licence fee, penalties and interest,” it said.
The company added that it had taken up the matter with Department of Telecommunications as well as Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, along with other affected CPSEs, and explained the non-applicability of interpretation of AGR to non-telecom companies.
