BENGALURU (Reuters) -India’s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a request by telecom companies including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel to recalculate how much they owe the government in licence fees, a court order showed.
Shares of Vodafone Idea and Indus Towers slumped around 15% each after the news, while Bharti Airtel briefly turned negative.
The companies had argued that the country’s telecommunications department made significant errors in calculating the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues, the basis for license fee calculation owed to the government.
Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Indus Towers did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The top court had in 2021 rejected a similar plea to correct errors in AGR calculation, arguing that it should only take into account revenue accrued from their core services.
The government had argued that it should include non-core revenue as well, such as money from rent or land sales.
(Reporting by Aleef Jahan in Bengaluru, Arpan Chaturvedi in New Delhi; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
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