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year period from 2006-07 to2009-10.

Commenting on the find-ings, Telecom Minister RaviShankar Prasad said special au-dit of the operators’ bookswould be done for three yearsfrom 2009, to check for under-reporting of revenues.

NEW DELHI: With the CAG reporttabled in Parliament on Fridayindicating a loss of Rs. 12,489crore to the exchequer due tounderstatement of revenues bysix telecom operators, includ-ing Airtel, Idea and Vodafone,

the government has ordered aspecial audit of telecom com-panies for three years.

“Verification of records of six PSPs indicated total under-statement of Rs. 46,045.75 crorein gross revenue, having corre-sponding impact of Rs. 3,752.37crore on licence fee (LF) and

Rs. 1,460.23 crore on spectrumusage charge (SUC). The inter-est on this short/non-paymentof LF and SUC works out to Rs.7,276.33 crore,” the Comptrollerand Auditor General of India(CAG) said. This is for the four-

“I have taken a grim view onthis because this is again a lega-

cy issue of the previous govern-ment… Even though in terms of well-established parliamen-tary procedure, the report willgo to the Public AccountsCommittee, I have directedSecretary Telecom and Mem-

ber Finance to put in place abust system in order that sgaps do not reoccur,” Mr. sad said.

“In conclusion, the afound that even after 16 yearthe introduction of the reveshare regime, the correctnand completeness of reve

flowing into the consolidaFund of India could not besured by DoT,” the CAG sai

The CAG report said thnancial impact on LF and Sdue to understatement of grevenue stood at Rs. 1,50crore for Reliance Commcations, Rs. 1,357.68 crore

Tata Teleservices, Rs. 1,06crore for Airtel, Rs. 749.85 crfor Vodafone, Rs. 423.26 crfor Idea and Rs. 107.61 croreAircel.

CAG finds telcos understatingrevenues, government orders audit Y UTHIKA BHARGAVA 

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