In 2003-04, 32.60 lakh phones were either disconnected or surrendered, while in 2002-03 the comparable figure was 17.93 lakh phones, Shakeel Ahmad, the Minister of State for IT and Telecom, told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

For MTNL, there was no waiting list as telephones were being provided on demand, he said. However, on October 31, 14,025 cases being "technically not feasible" were pending in MTNL Mumbai, 971 recently booked cases were pending in Delhi, and the company was in the process of providing phones in all those cases.

Ahmad said switchover of subscribers from fixed line to mobile services and migration to other operators as well as surrender of additional telephone lines are the reasons behind surrender/disconnection of landline telephone connections.

The revenue loss in 2003-04 due to illegal routing of international calls through local lines is Rs 10.83 crore (Rs 108.3 million) while in the previous fiscal it was Rs 11.43 crore (Rs 114.3 million). These figures are based on the cases detected so far.

The department of telecom has issued a notice, imposing penalty of Rs 150 crore (Rs 1500 million) for violation of licence agreements to Reliance Infocomm on November 24.

Reliance owed BSNL Rs 257 crore (Rs 2.57 billion) as on November 5 and they have paid approximately Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) so far. MTNL has made a claim of Rs 341.27 crore (Rs 3.41 billion) and Reliance has paid Rs 66.76 crore (Rs 667.6 million) to it.