Within hours of the Congress alleging that the Modi government was overstepping its limits by virtually rejecting the Comptroller and Auditor- General’s findings that Rs. 46,000 crore of revenue was under-reported by six telecom companies, the government said it was taking vigorous action to recover the lost revenue.
A CAG audit found under-reporting by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea, Tata and Aircel from 2006-07 to 2009-10, and when the report was tabled in Parliament in March, former Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad ordered a special audit of the operators for three years from 2009. To a query, the Ministry told The Hindu then: “The CAG will not do the audit. DoT will pick from empanelled CAG auditors.”
However, on Thursday the government seemed to take a different line. “Demands raised from this exercise will be recovered with due interest and penalty as applicable under licence agreements. There is, therefore, no loss of revenue to the government,” the Ministry said.
It said the CAG report on understatement of revenue was received in February 2016. “The report points out a shortfall of Rs. 5,000 crore in licence fee and spectrum usage charge and Rs. 7,000 crore in interest,” the Ministry said.
“The department received the key documents scrutinised by the CAG in mid-June 2016. These are being vigorously examined and the process of issue of demands for the four financial years for six operators in 22 licence service areas in consonance with licence agreement is currently ongoing,” it said.
The Ministry went on to claim that revenue assurance was the top priority of the DoT. “The government is determined to recover every rupee of underpaid amount with interest and penalty from every defaulting company in the minimum possible time,” it said, in a stand that was different from its earlier position of ordering a fresh audit by some private agency.
Meanwhile, the Congress alleged that the government opted for an alternative re-evaluation of the CAG findings, reflecting “the apparent mal-intent of the government to dilute or diminish the figures put forth by the CAG”. Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala told reporters that the CAG report “specifically looked at under-reporting of income and non-uniform method of accounting adopted by various telecom companies and consequent lack of obligation to pay outstanding licence fee and Spectrum Usage Charges.”
“The CAG found that there was an amount of Rs. 12,488.93 crore, which remains un-recovered by the government. This does not include penalty and other relevant taxes. Final loss for these four years would be even greater than the stated amount,” he said.
“Although there has been considerable increase in business, consumer base and income, even if loss of exchequer is calculated on the same formula for the years 2010-11 to 2015-16, this figure would be more than Rs. 45,000 crore,” he added.
The Congress alleged that the CAG audit was delayed due to a challenge before the courts regarding jurisdiction of the CAG to audit accounts of private telecom companies.
“The Supreme Court transferred all the matters before it and rejected the claims of telecom companies according to the judgment dated April 17, 2014 and permitted the CAG to audit the accounts,” said Mr. Surjewala.
The Congress said that instead of immediately acting on these revelations reflecting serious loss to public exchequer, the Modi government opted for an alternate re-evaluation of these figures.
“This is a clear methodology of the Modi government to inordinately delay the process of recovery for years together, if not writing it off entirely,” he alleged.
The Congress spokesperson said, “We demand recovery of all the money and further audit of the telecom companies before and after the stated audit period (2006-07 to 2009-10). The companies that got licences after 2010 are also amenable to audit.”
