Idea gets special auditors' clean-chit

The government-appointed special auditors have found no major accounting discrepancy in Birlas-owned Idea Cellular, although they failed to get full details to assess additional liability.

According to sources, the auditors did not come across any major diversion of revenues that may have led to lower Adjusted Gross Revenue, which is the basis for arriving at licence and spectrum fee liability.

The total impact of revised AGR on account of licence fee and spectrum fee was seen at little over Rs 74 crore (Rs 740 million).

But even out of this, about Rs 48 crore (Rs 480 million) becomes non-payable as per a TDSAT judgement, the special auditors are believed to have said. This leaves only a liability of Rs 26 crore (Rs 260 million).

When contacted, Idea Cellular managing director Sanjeev Aga told PTI: "The special audit report on Idea Cellular has reported no discrepency. Indeed, it could not have. "There are tabulations of some amounts, presumably for data collation as required by the DoT. Such heads of accounts were treated in line with mandated accounting standards, strictly as per TDSAT ruling and also the view of special auditors is not to the contrary," he added.

The DoT had appointed special auditors to look into the books of leading telecom service providers to ensure that operators were paying licecne and spectrum fee as per the terms and conditions of the licences.

The auditors pointed out that the company failed to provide full details to enable auditors to assess additional liability on infrastructure sharing and giving free airtime.