Last week’s reports of the DoT ordering review of accounting books of telecom operators namely Bharti Airtel, Idea, Vodafone Essar and Tata Teleservices is reportedly following a complaint by Amar Singh regarding the alleged unfair measures adopted by these companies.

Telecom Secretary, Siddharthh Behura is quoted to say that the Amar Singh has pointed out the possibility of unfair accounting practices adopted by these firms. The DoT is even considering replying to Singh’s concerns.

The issue of unfair accounting practices first came into highlight when it emerged that Reliance Communications has published two different revenue figures, one to Trai and other to potential international investors. While the figure revealed to Trai reported revenues from mobile services on the lower side with some of the revenues passed on to the company’s internet business division, the figures released to others showed a different revenue figure. It was alleged that RCom manipulated revenues to gain from the fact that internet service does not requires any licence fee renewal as in the case of mobile services where 6-10% of AGR is to paid every year as renewal fees.

Even the CVC came down heavily against DoT and RCom over the issue. Subsequently DoT ordered review of accounting books of RCom and appointed an auditing firm to carry out the job. 

Amar Singh’s interest in the telecom sector is well known as he is considered to be close to a business house which has high stakes in the telecom sector. The political leader had even sought surrendering of additional spectrum from incumbent GSM operators.