Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday said the Rs 3-lakh crore sought by the DoT from non-telecom PSUs, such as GAIL, Oil India Ltd and PowerGrid, was a result of "communication gap" as these firms are not liable to pay any dues following the Supreme Court's October 24 ruling that non-telecom revenues of telecom firms should be included for considering payments of government dues.

OIL and GAIL, which were not a party to the litigation that led to the October 24 order, filed clarificatory applications in the Supreme Court.

Explaining the reasons for the company filing clarification application in the court, Sushil Chandra Mishra, CMD of Oil India told CNBC-TV18, “We wrote letter to DoT and made an appeal that the claim was not right. But still there was no reply, so we had no other option but to go to the Court.”

Further clarifying things, he said they were in contact with the oil ministry, but since it was a court proceeding and January 23 was the last date to pay the dues, they felt it was prudent to go for the filing before that date.

He further said, “It is not at all feasible to make the payment because it is already more than our net worth. It is not correct also because the revenue generated from that business is very little, it is just 0.01 percent of the total revenues we earn from oil and gas.”

Following the October 24 Supreme Court ruling that non-telecom revenues of telecom firms such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea should be included for considering payments of government dues, the telecom department asked OIL to pay Rs 48,000 crore in principal dues together with interest and penalty. The dues sought are double the net worth of OIL

First Published:Jan 24, 2020 11:52 AM IST