Government orders special audit of five telecom firms
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New Delhi: Five telecom firms will be audited for suspected misreporting of revenues by them, the government said Thursday. The telecom operators that are under the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) scanner are Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices. "The government has received a reference from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India against Bharti Airtel in this regard," Minister of State for Communications and IT, Gurdas Kamat, said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha. "Necessary action, if required, will be taken after receipt of the special audit report," Kamat added. The DoT in May had announced the special audit after the sectoral watchdog said some telecom companies were diverting revenues from mobile services to other offerings with lower license fees so that payout to the government was lower, thus causing a loss to the exchequer. Kamat also said the telecom licence fees in the first two quarter of 2008-09 had dipped 46.3 percent to 4,736.46 crore, as against 8,826.45 crore in the previous year.
Source: IANS
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