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It happens with clockwork regularity. Every time members
of Parliament vacate their offices, many of them 'forget'
to clear their telephone bills - and Mahanagar Telephone
Nigam Limited has arrears of over Rs 8.5 crore as proof
of such amnesia.
Official records show that 818 former parliamentarians -
many of them now dead owe MTNL a total of Rs 8,50,66,000.
The amounts range from Rs 1,000 to Rs 13 lakh. (This is
excluding the arrears of current MPs.) The prominent
defaulters include Congress members Sunil Dutt, Mukul
Wasnik, Jayanti Patnaik and Arjun Singh (now in the
Congress-T).
While Dutt and Wasnik have relatively modest arrears of
Rs 2 lakh each to show for their 'forgetfulness', Patnaik
owes MTNL Rs 3,17,000. Arjun Singh's amnesia, however,
extends to the tune of RS 7 lakh.
Other top defaulters include Venkata Krishna Reddy (Rs 11
lakh), Dr Chinta Mohan (Rs 9.5 lakh), Ram Sunder Das (Rs
11 lakh), K M R Janardhanan (Rs 11 lakh), M M Hashim (Rs
13 lakh), Rajesh Kumar (Rs 6 lakh), Ramdev Ram (Rs 9
lakh) and Dr M S Gohil (Rs 11 lakh).
Each MP's annual phone call entitlement is for 50,000
units, which is worth Rs 65,000. If he exceeds this
limit, he is expected to pay for the additional calls
from his own pocket. Most of the MPs do cross the limit,
but make good the extra amount before they vacate the
office. But there are others who get the aforementioned
amnesia attacks, and leave MTNL much the worse for wear.
Technically, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats
which see to the MPs' payments - should deduct the
telephone arrears from their allowances. But as the
bills are mostly large, and the allowances small, there
is little they can do about it.
"Our standing instructions are to treat the MPs with
utmost politeness. Very rarely do we get around to
disconnecting their lines," says a senior MTNL official.
In fact, the officials, though they knew that the ex-MPs
owed a lot in arrears, had no idea about the exact amount
or even the complete list of defaulters. It was only
after a question to this effect was posed in Parliament
that MTNL got its act together and set about compiling
the details.
While top MTNL officials like chief general manager N K
Dua and group general manager S K Gupta prefer to keep
their counsel, finance manager S R Kapoor claimed the
officials were following the 'normal procedure to recover
the money'.
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