NEW DELHI| MUMBAI: The government has received almost Rs 11,000 crore from mobile phone operators including Bharti Airtel Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio Infocomm as part of upfront payments for airwaves following the just-concluded spectrum auction, bolstering the Centre’s bid to narrow its fiscal deficit.The payments totalling Rs 10,791 crore on Tuesday, the last day of the fiscal year, were a part of the nearly Rs 29,000 crore that the auction winners need to pay by April 8 and came after Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad cited national interest while urging the telecom operators to help the central government meet its fiscal targets."Payments have come in from Bharti Airtel , Idea, Reliance Jio, Vodafone and Tata. RCom ( Reliance Communications ) and Aircel haven’t paid so far," a senior official said. "This should be enough to meet the fiscal target," he added.Airtel is believed to have paid over Rs 4,000 crore while Idea and Tata Teleservices have shelled out around a fourth of their upfront payment dues, people familiar with the matter said. The companies didn’t respond to ET’s emailed queries, but a top executive at one of the auction winners said the industry was responding to the minister’s "sincere" request.The proceeds from the sale that ended on March 25 will help the government in its efforts to keep fiscal deficit at 4.1 per cent of GDP for the year ended March 31. The government earned a total of about Rs 1.10 lakh crore in the 19-day auction, but budgeted only Rs 11,000 crore from spectrum sales for the last financial year. The auction rules stipulate that operators have to pay either 25 per cent or 33 per cent of the winning bid amounts, based on the airwaves they bought, within 10 days and the balance in 10 equal installments after a two-year moratorium.

"National revenue is equally important and so is the image of the country and this gesture of telecom operators will be highly appreciated," Prasad had said on Thursday while urging operators to pay up earlier than required. "With such a sincere request from the government, and a payout scheduled anyway, a payment will be made to stay on the right side of the establishment," a senior telecom executive told ET on condition of anonymity. An executive at a second auction winner also pointed out that there were a number of holidays between now and April 8. "Such a large payment is usually not made in a single transaction and often not in a single day," said the person. After Tuesday, there were only four working days to make the payment.



According to the final results, Idea Cellular was the highest bidder ( Rs 30,306.98 crore), followed by Bharti Airtel ( Rs 29,130.20 crore), Vodafone ( Rs 25,959.74 crore), Reliance Jio Infocomm ( Rs 10,077.53 crore), Reliance Communications ( Rs 4,299.13 crore), Tata Teleservices ( Rs 7,851.33 crore) and Aircel ( Rs 2,250 crore). The DoT website also lists the upfront payments due: Bharti Airtel ( Rs 7,832.58 crore), Idea ( Rs 7,790.1 crore), Vodafone ( Rs 6,867.93 crore), Reliance Jio ( Rs 2,519.38 crore), Tata Teleservices ( Rs 2,013.33 crore), RCom ( Rs 1,106.95 crore) and Aircel ( Rs 742.5 crore).