DoT officials are concerned that despite their advice to the contrary, the company might get away by not paying Rs 350 crore of the total of over Rs 400 crore due to the department as licence fee. "If licence fee dues for 693 days is waived off, this will translate to a loss of Rs 350 crore for the Government," said a senior DoT official.

The matter of the revival of the EGTL licence to operate cellular services in Punjab, had been referred from Mr Sikdar to Mr Paswan to the Law Ministry to the Cabinet. According to sources, the law secretary R L Meena had referred the case to the AG, who is expected to give a decision shortly.EGTL is a 100 per cent subsidiary of the erstwhile JT Mobile, the cellular service provider in Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, which was acquired by Bharti Enterprises early last year. Evergrowth however was not a part of the Bharti-JT Mobile deal. The Evergrowth licence was cancelled in December 1996, when JT Mobile's promoters pledged the company's shares with the Essar Group.

The bone of contention between the DoT officials and the company is that while the latter wants to pay only the amount that was due to it as licence fee, on the date of cancellation of the licence, the DoT officials insist that the company pay the entire amount, including licence fee accrued during the 693 days, when the licence was lying cancelled.

Cloud looms over Evergrowth's migration to NTP '99 Their rationale: "If EGTL does not want to pay the entire amount, on the premise that it will not pay for the time period when the licence stood cancelled, then in effect its accepts the fact that the licence has been terminated. In that case, it should just prepare itself for a rebid, whenever we chose to sell it again, rather than lobbying for a revival."

Earlier, on August 31, 2000 the Government had sent a letter to Bharti Mobile, asking to clear all arrears within 90 days. However, Bharti officials have clarified that their company has nothing to do with EGTL and the company is actually a part of the Essar Group.