The Supreme Court has dismissed a batch of pleas filed by companies, including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, seeking the correction of alleged errors in adjusted gross revenue (AGR) and recall of the apex court’s 2019 order directing them to pay ₹1.47 lakh in AGR dues to the telecom department.
Curative petitions are the last remedy for any petitioner before the apex court after exhausting the initial remedies such as appeal/writ petition and thereafter the review petitions.
The order dismissing the curative petitions came into public knowledge only on Thursday although it was dismissed on August 30 by a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and two of the senior most judges of the top court — Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice B.R. Gavai.
“Application for listing the Curative Petitions in open Court is rejected. We have gone through the Curative Petitions and the connected documents.
“In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra v Ashok Hurra. The Curative Petitions are dismissed,” the bench said.
In terms of the Rupa Ashok Hurra Vs Ashok Hurra case, a curative petition is allowed only if the court finds that there was a definite “error” in the order passed by the earlier benches in the appeal/review petitions, or “in the interest of justice,” or “to prevent the abuse of process of court”.
The curative petitions were filed in September last year challenging the apex court’s 2019 judgment directing the telecom companies to cough up ₹1.47 lakh crore.
On September 1, 2021 the apex court had allowed the telecom operators to pay the dues spread over a 10-year period, instead of in one go, as was directed by it in the earlier October 2019 order.
The stock of Vodafone Idea slumped 19.60 per cent to settle at ₹10.38 on the BSE. During the day, it dropped 22.15 per cent to hit a 52-week low of ₹10.05.
Bharti Airtel, however, ended 0.75 per cent higher at ₹1,665.05 after falling 0.36 per cent to ₹1,646.65 intra-day.
