The Department of Telecom has sought a weekly update on the status of the audit being conducted on Reliance Communications accounts. The move comes after the auditor appointed by DoT failed to meet the deadline set for submitting its report on whether the company was paying licence fees to the Government as per norms. The auditing firm — Parakh & Co — was supposed to have completed the audit by May 26. The firm has told DoT it could not meet the deadline because RCom delayed submission of records. According to Parakh & Co, the audit was started on May 11 because of the delay. The auditor has sought three more months to complete the audit. DoT had appointed the special auditor after it was discovered that RCom was showing all its non-voice revenues under the ISP licence. It is has been alleged that RCom was not paying revenue share to the Government as per norms. DoT has also appointed auditors to examine the books of other telecom players, including Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices and Vodafone, after the telecom regulator pointed out that integrated players have scope for taking advantage of differential revenue share percentages for various types of telecom services.
