Opinion | For a healthy telecom market, my lord

Telecom firms, lumped with a huge bill by a Supreme Court judgement last October, may finally get to breathe easy if India’s top court accepts a petition filed by the government asking for their burden to be lightened. The Centre has reportedly asked for them to be allowed to make staggered payments of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues over 20 years at an interest rate of 8%. According to reports, it has also asked for a dropping of the penalty and interest components of the sums they’d been asked to cough up.

This turn for leniency is good news for the entire sector, and the reprieve was an outcome of consultations held by the government with industry representatives. Last year’s verdict on a dispute between the two had gone against telecom firms. They had argued that the AGRs they contractually needed to share with the Centre did not include revenues off services that did not use telecom spectrum, but lost.