Supreme Court AGR dues hearing LIVE: The Supreme Court hearing on adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues is underway. The hearing was scheduled to start at 2 PM, but it was delayed. A three-judge bench of Justices Arun Mishra, S Abdul Nazeer and MR Shah are hearing the case. The Supreme Court in its last hearing held on June 18, asked the telecom companies to make a minimum payment to show bonafide, provide a roadmap of payments (payment plan) if allowed to stagger payments and provide books of accounts for the last decade for assessment. The apex court had also asked them to first pay upfront a reasonable amount of dues, backed by securities and guarantees, before it could consider their plea for a staggered payment spread over 20 years. SC further asked the telcos to file audited balance sheets of the past 10 years and asked the DoT to examine their payment plan, securities, and guarantees.

As per the Department of Telecommunications, out of Bharti Airtel’s nearly Rs 43,000 crore total dues, the company has paid nearly Rs 18,000 crore. On the other hand, along with the Rs 1,000 crore payment made on Saturday and Rs 6,854 crore in last three tranches, Vodafone Idea has paid a total of Rs 7,854 crore to DoT towards the AGR dues, against its total AGR dues of around Rs 58,000 crore. Total AGR dues for Tata Teleservices, as per the DoT, stands at Rs 16,789 crore. Out of which the company has Rs 4,197 crore so far. As the DoT estimates, telcos owe a total of Rs 1.19 lakh crore, of which it has received Rs 26,896 crore so far. Currently, the balance stands at Rs 92,520 crore.