Telcom firms owe government over Rs 9,600 crore in licence, spectrum charges

Telecom firms owe the government a whopping Rs 9,636.34 crore as outstanding amount for spectrum usage charges and licence fees, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

Bharti Airtel, India's largest private mobile operator, owes the maximum amount of Rs 3,275.56 for spectrum usage charges and licence fee followed by state-run BSNL (Rs 2,092.95 crore), Minister of State for Communication and IT Milind Deora said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.

Reliance Communication owes the third highest amount of Rs 1,656.23 crore, followed by Vodafone (Rs 1,122.01 crore), Tata Teleservices (Rs 458.32 crore), Idea Cellular (Rs 428.06 crore) among others, the Minister added.

The government has also imposed penalties to the tune of Rs 2,199.73 crore on operators in respect of outstanding usage charges and licence fee, Mr Deora said.

Government earned Rs 6,889.28 crore from spectrum usage charges for 2012-13 fiscal year, which includes Rs 1,706.92 crore as auction money of 2G spectrum, and Rs 8,540.71 crore as licence fee for first three quarters of the ongoing fiscal year.

In the previous fiscal year, the spectrum usage charges were Rs 4,856.05 crore and licence fees totalled to Rs 11,413.23 crore.

"The operators have been given an option of deferred payment. The first instalment has not been paid by the operators, which have been taken as outstanding dues. The matter is sub-judice," he said.