Vodafone Idea Ltd on Saturday disclosed that it has made another payment of Rs 1,000 crore towards adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues, taking its total payment to Rs 7,854 crore.

The department of telecom (DoT) had earlier estimated the company’s AGR dues at Rs 58,254 crore for a period up to 2016-17, but the telco had put the dues at Rs 46,000 crore after adjustment of certain computational errors and payments made in the past that were not considered in the DoT demand.

However, in March, the apex court had ordered that no self-assessment or re-assessment is to be done and the AGR dues which were placed before it have to be paid, including the interest and penalty.

Both Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel have filed an affidavit pleading that a timeframe of 20 years be granted to make the payments. The matter is likely to be heard in the third week of July.

In a regulatory filing to the stock exchanges on Saturday, Vodafone Idea said that the Supreme Court, at the last hearing held on June 18, 2020, had passed an order which “requested the telecom operators to file audited balance sheets for the last 10 years, including for the calender year ending March 31, 2020 as well as the income tax returns and the particulars of AGR deposited during the last 10 years and we have also requested to make payments of reasonable amount also to show their bonafides, before the next date of hearing.”

The country’s third-largest telecom operator added that in line with this order, on Friday it paid an additional sum of Rs 1,000 crore to the DoT towards the AGR dues. The company had earlier deposited
Rs 6,854 crore in three tranches. Thus, it has paid an aggregate amount of Rs 7,854 crore towards the AGR dues.

Earlier this month, the company had reported a huge loss of Rs 73,878 crore for the year ended March 2020 — the highest ever by any Indian firm — after it made provisions for the statutory dues. The firm had then said that the liability has “cast significant doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”.

For the January-March quarter, its net loss had increased to Rs 11,643.5 crore against Rs 4,881.9 crore in the year-ago period.