FinMin finalises reply to Vodafone rejoinder: Sources

The Finance Ministry meeting to decide on the response to Vodafone's rejoinder is over. The Ministry's reply will be not sent to the PMO for approval, reports CNBC-TV18's Aakansha Sethi quoting sources.

Vodafone has sent the notice to the government invoking the bilateral investment treaty with Netherlands saying that the retrospective amendment was not in the spirit of the BIPA. To this the government had replied saying that they had already refunded the money as per the Supreme Court order. The Vodafone then sent a rejoinder to the government saying that if you have refunded the money then also give us an undertaking that the retrospective amendment will not apply to us.
The inter ministerial group met today to discuss the reply to this rejoinder and sources at this point in time is that they have decided not to give Vodafone any such undertaking. If such an undertaking is not given to Vodafone it is clearly indicative of the fact that the retrospective amendment applies to them and the government will move ahead on it.
There has been a lot of speculation on why the government has not moved on giving the tax notice to Vodafone as yet. Sources say that this was due to the fact that the earlier Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was going to resign and contest Presidential elections which is why he did not want at that point in time to move on Vodafone. So now the IT department has sent a reference to the Attorney in General on how the methodology as it should be used to go ahead with the notice to Vodafone. It remains to be seen when actually that notice is sent. Also watch the accompanying video.