Furnish revenue sharing details to CAG, SC orders mobile operators

Taking note of the somewhat secretive revenue sharing arrangements between private telecom operators, the Supreme Court on Monday asked the service providers, both on the GSM and CDMA platforms, to submit details of such arrangements to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) within two weeks.

However, the apex court bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia and justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar said the CAG cannot examine these financial statements till the Delhi high court, which is hearing the matter, decides on the statutory auditor's jurisdiction to audit the documents.

Members of the Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI), which represents GSM operators, had earlier given these revenue sharing details to the department of telecommunications.

Even as the DoT is verifying the reports of the independent auditors on revenue sharing details, the CAG wants to find out whether there are any instances of revenue under-reporting for computing the licence fee.

This comes after independent auditors had found some discrepancies, especially in the case of Reliance Communications.

The COAI as well as CDMA companies' organisation Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) had challenged the CAG's direction to the members of these two associations to provide revenue sharing documents for the purpose of carrying out auditing.