Common man being fleeced to offset telcos’ burden: Cong

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 15

Taking up the cudgels for the common man by claiming that the 30 to 40 per cent tariff hike for prepaid cell phone users by telecom companies amounted to fleecing them, the Congress party, today, claimed that the Supreme Court’s order on unpaid dues by these companies was a scathing castigation of the Narendra Modi government which had lost its moral standing to continue in office.

Addressing a press conference, here today, AICC media in charge, Randeep Singh Surjewala, said the hike would imply an extra annual amount of Rs 35,561.81 cr for the companies.

“If we calculate this for the remaining term of four-and-a-half years of the Modi government, this amount totals to Rs 1,60,028 crore since there are 112 crore users. The Supreme Court had directed the telecom companies to pay Rs 1,02,000 crore (as indicated by the Solicitor General before the Court) to the government towards ‘Adjusted Gross Revenue’ (AGR) under the Telecom Policy, 1999. This implies that the entire burden of the AGR has conveniently been shifted on to the common man through this hiked tariff and data user charges,” Surjewala held, emphasising that the telecom companies were in a “win, win” situation after this owing to certain decisions of the Centre.

Playing on the word ‘chronology,’ Surjewala explained the “crony capitalism” by stating that the SC ordered the telecom companies, Vodafone-Idea, Airtel Bharti, Tata Tele Services (now owned by Airtel) and Reliance Jio, to pay the AGR of Rs 1,02,000 crore on October 24 last year.

“On November, 20, 2019, the Cabinet approved deferring Rs 42,000 crore of ‘Spectrum Auction Installments’ of Telecom companies for the years 2020-21 and 2021-22, benefitting the three private telecom companies,” he said, adding that the companies hiked the tariff and data usage charges for prepaid customers by 30 to 40 percent on December 1, 3 and 6 last year.

“Again, on January 23 this year, the Modi government issued an order for not recovering Rs 1,02,000 crore from telecom companies and not to take any coercive action by stating ‘not to insist for any payment pursuant to the order passed by Supreme Court and not to take any coercive steps till further orders.’ This means that not only will the common man end up paying through his nose but the telecom companies have been granted a three-fold benefit by way of the decision of stalling the recovery of the AGR but also from the deferment of Rs 42,000 crore as also getting additional tariff,” Surjewala insisted.