Govt should bring legislation to resolve AGR crisis: Harish Salve

The government may not have any other option but to bring in a legislation to resolve the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) crisis and prevent operators from shutting down, given the Supreme Court’s recent observations, senior advocate Harish Salve said. Speaking to ET Now’s Nayantara Rai, Salve described as “illegal” and “overreach” any move by the top court to send company executives to jail for non-payment. Edited excerpts:

It was a big day at the Supreme Court (in the AGR case)…

There is a dispute between A and B, i.e., the government and the private telecom operators, that dispute gets resolved. The government gets a judgement in its favour. Now, as decree holder, if the government wants to hold back enforcing its decree, I do not know why it should not be open to the government, especially when they are coming in and explaining to the court that there is good reason to do so. This problem has now possibly reached a stage where anything short of a legislation is not going to resolve this.