The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has issued demand notices to six telecom companies including Vodafone India, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular to  pay over Rs 4,270 million for alleged evasion of anti-dumping duty while importing digital transmission products from China and Israel.

The imported transmission products were for synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), a digital transmission equipment, which enables transmission of multiple data on single line. The show cause notices to the telecom companies were issued between December 23, 2014 and January 5, 2015. DRI had asked Vodafone India to pay Rs Rs 3,333 million, Bharti Airtel (Rs 464.3 million) and Idea Cellular (Rs 93.8 million). Over and above the said amount, the telecom companies were also asked to pay interest.

Except Vodafone India, other companies which were served the demand notice have paid up (fully or partially). Bharti Airtel has paid Rs 261.7 million while Idea Cellular has deposited Rs 47 million. Both the operators and other three companies have agreed to pay the remaining amount over the next few months. Since, Vodafone India has not paid up, DRI plans to take up the matter for adjudication.

Action against these players was initiated following a complaint filed with Directorate General of Anti Dumping by Tejas Networks against alleged dumping of SDH equipment from China and Israel. After a thorough investigation, provisional anti-dumping duty was imposed on these players in December 2009 followed by final anti-dumping duty in December 2010. The rate of final duty varied from 7 per cent to 266 per cent, depending on the combination of producer and supplier.

Following the investigation, the Mumbai zonal unit of DRI found that the telecom companies had misrepresented the SDH equipment as either ‘non-SDH’ or as ‘part of other equipment.’ Based on this discovery, DRI issued show-cause notices to the players.