The telecoms department has issued a demand notice to Vodafone asking the Indian arm of the world's largest mobile phone company to pay up Rs 1,263 crore for reporting lower than earned revenue during 2008-09 and 2010-11. 

People aware of the development told ETthat the telecoms department issued the notice on Monday and has sought payments of Rs 715 crore for the year 2008-09 and Rs 548 crore for 2010-11. The people also said that the notice was sent out after DoT found procedural lapses and anomalies in Vodafone India's reporting of revenues, forex gains, taxation and interest during these years. Vodafone India has been asked to pay within 15 days. An executive with the company confirmed receipt of the notice, however the company did not respond to an ET query. The move comes as a fresh blow to the company that is already contesting penalties, fines and one-time spectrum charges running into thousands of crores. 

This is the second instance of DoT issuing notices to the telco for under-stating revenues. Earlier this year in February, the department had asked Vodafone to pay Rs 877 crore towards additional charges for airwaves between 2008 and 2012. At that time, DoT had issued notices to Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel as well. 

The DoT had issued notices based on the Supreme Court's ruling that allowed the government to collect revenue share from non-telecom activities. Therefore, DoT had recalculated licence fee and had included revenues from corporate receipts, handset sales, real estate transactions and interest earned from bank deposits amongst others. ET could not independently verify whether the fresh notices also tow the same line of argument. 

Last year, the DoT had slapped penalties totaling Rs 1,594 crore on Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications, after it rejected their defence against charges that accused them of understating revenues and paying less levies. 

DoT had issued showcause notices to each of them earlier last year after a DoT appointed panel endorsed the findings of external auditors, which said these operators had understated revenues by Rs 10,268 crore during 2006-07 and 2007-08. 

Meanwhile, the union cabinet is expected to take up a proposal to settle the tax dispute with Vodafone on Tuesday. The finance ministry will seek cabinet nod to begin discussion with the company in the Rs 20,000-crore tax dispute after the law ministry gave its goahead. (Economic Times)