"I am literally shocked," said Justice Arun Mishra as the Supreme Court on Friday warned of contempt proceedings against telecom companies and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for non-payment of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues and directed that all directors of the companies be present at the next hearing.

The court, which had asked companies including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel to pay dues worth over Rs 1 lakh crore to the government by January 23, had rejected petitions seeking a review of its order last month.

CNBC-TV18 spoke to Nitin Soni, Director-Asia Pacific TMT Fitch Ratings, Sandeep Parekh, founder of Finsec Law Advisors and telecom experts Sanjay Kapoor and Mahesh Uppal on the dressing down given by the Supreme Court to understand the road ahead for the major telecom players, especially Vodafone, as well as the government.

Speaking about notice against the DoT officer who wrote to the Attorney General asking him to not insist on payment of dues till further orders, Kapoor said, “Given the precedence in this country and what the Supreme Court has said, it looks virtually impossible for somebody to stand up against the court’s verdict at this stage. I will find it very surprising if somebody takes a stance that is even a bit dilutive to what the court has said. They will expedite the matter, it will be speeded up.”

On expediting the demand for payments and the options left before Vodafone-Idea, Parekh said, “Given the facts of the contempt proceedings being initiated, I think they will certainly make a sizable down-payment. It is not clear what remedies the public sector can pursue. We are looking at a very large number, it is Rs 2.2 lakh crore. I really doubt Delhi Metro, GAIL (clients) have this kind of money to pay up in the first place and you don’t want all of these guys to go belly up paying the government. I am surprised SC went hammer and tongs after something which is so impractical to collect.”

When asked if Vodafone-Idea was taken to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), will they be otherwise affected, Nitin Soni of Fitch Ratings replied, “The question is who will take Vodafone-Idea to the NCLT? Will, the government take them to NCLT? Because if they have to recover money from Vodafone-Idea and if Vodafone-Idea cannot pay the AGR amount - they cannot even pay the deferred spectrum liabilities. So in my view, I don’t think the government will be rushing to take them to the NCLT to recover anything because the recoverability from Vodafone-Idea at the moment is pretty low.”

“This was not entirely unexpected. It is true that we had all hoped and the DoT itself had hoped that the SC would leave some room for negotiation but clearly that has not happened. One key reason for that was it was DoT whose appeal was upheld by SC. Now for DoT to want a review is not a very tenable position. Options before Vodafone-Idea are shrinking. The only option I can see is that if the companies can persuade the government to change policy on how this thing would be done and then there could be a large settlement,” said telecom expert, Mahesh Uppal.