Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices have collectively paid more than Rs 13,000 crore towards their outstanding adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), a day ahead of the deadline for these payments following a four-year moratorium.
Sources aware of the development said that Bharti Airtel has paid over Rs 9,000 crore towards AGR dues to the DoT on Monday. The country’s second-largest telecom services provider had asked the DoT for reassessment and recalculation of dues, including computation errors, arithmetical errors, and errors of omission, on the same lines as being done for Vodafone Idea, but has not been given any reprieve.
Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has stated publicly that the government was offering relief to Vodafone Idea since it had been directed to do so by the Supreme Court. The government is also the single-largest shareholder in the carrier. However, on Bharti Airtel’s requests, the minister said that the carrier will have to approach the Supreme Court for getting any relief on AGR dues.
Airtel’s AGR dues are estimated to exceed Rs 40,000 crore. The company has paid about Rs 18,000 crore earlier. According to its annual report for 2025, the dues were at Rs 38,604 crore, but the outstanding continues to rise as interest on principal, penalty, and interest on penalty are being levied by the government for non-payment of the remaining dues. With Monday’s payment of Rs 9,200 crore, the dues would now stand at just over Rs 30,000 crore. Sources added that the company will continue to seek reassessment of its remaining dues.
Tata Teleservices is learnt to have paid Rs 4,170 crore towards outstanding AGR dues.
The payments to the government come after a four-year moratorium on spectrum payments and AGR dues came to a close. The moratorium was offered by the government in September 2021 as part of the sector-wise relief package, where payments for dues up till FY19 were deferred. This followed a 2020 judgment by the Supreme Court on the definition of AGR in favour of the government, to include telecom as well as non-telecom revenues for calculating AGR dues. The apex court had directed the companies to pay outstanding dues in staggered annual payments starting FY26 and going till FY31.