Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said that the Department of Telecom is in constant dialogue with telecom companies after the Supreme Court pulled up these companies for delaying payment of AGR dues.

“The Department of Telecommunications is actively engaging with telecom companies after the Supreme Court’s order. I will hear from the department what position it wants to take on the matter,” she told a press conference here.

Sitharaman, who was here to interact with the industry leaders, also assured the start-up community that she will look into why a large number of start-ups were left out of the DPIIT registered list.

She was responding to a question on the ESOP tax related benefits accruing currently to only 200 of the 28,000 DPIIT-registered start-ups, while there are over 40,000 start-ups in the country.

She said the difference in numbers arose because some start-ups were registered with the DPIIT and some were not. “Why are some limited to being defined as start-ups by the government and others left out? We can have a discussion on it, we can have DPIIT sort it out with you,” said Sitharaman.

She also urged the industry to come up with suggestions to fine-tune the regulations.

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