Bharti Infratel on Saturday said its board will meet on Monday to chart out the future course of action following the telecom department’s approval to its merger with Indus Towers.

The merger of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers will create a pan-India tower company with over 163,000 towers operating across all 22 telecom service areas. The combined entity will be the largest tower company in the world outside China.

“The FDI approval for the merger of Indus Towers with Bharti Infratel has been received late evening yesterday (on Friday),” Bharti Infratel said in a regulatory filing.

It added that the board of directors of the company will meet on February 24, 2020 to “take stock of and decide on the future course of action”.

Bharti Infratel and Vodafone hold a 42 per cent stake each in Indus. Vodafone Idea holds an 11.15 per cent stake in the mobile tower firm.

According to the plans, the combined company, which would fully own the respective businesses of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers, would change its name to Indus Towers and would continue to be listed on the Indian stock exchanges.

The timely completion of the tower deal was critical for the companies as it would allow Bharti and Vodafone Idea to offload their stake and raise funds.

The deal was stuck as the department of telecom (DoT) held the FDI approval in abeyance because of a Rs 22,000-crore withholding tax dispute between the UK’s Vodafone Group and India. This approval was key to the merger of the two tower companies and, in turn, crucial for Vodafone Idea to divest its stake and raise funds.

Loss-making Vodafone Idea has been looking forward to this tower merger deal closure to raise around Rs 4,500 crore from the sale of its stake in the combined entity, which could be used to pay a portion of its AGR dues.

Indus Towers is a three-way joint venture among Bharti Infratel, UK-based Vodafone Group and Vodafone Idea.

Vodafone Idea has 11.15 per cent and the remaining 4.85 per cent is with private equity firm Providence.

The US-based asset management firm is also likely to join Vodafone Idea in selling stakes in Indus Towers for around Rs 2,000 crore.

The development comes at a time Vodafone Idea is confronted with total AGR dues of over Rs 53,000 crore. Of this, it has paid only Rs 3,500 crore in two tranches earlier this week.

In all, as many as 15 entities owe the government Rs 1.47 lakh crore — Rs 92,642 crore in unpaid licence fee and another Rs 55,054 crore in outstanding spectrum usage charges.

These dues arose after the Supreme Court, in October last year, upheld the government’s position on including revenue from non-core businesses in calculating the annual adjusted gross revenue (AGR) of telecom companies, a share of which is paid as licence and spectrum fee to the exchequer.