Wipro PAT up 58% to Rs 170 cr: Wipro Ltd has posted a 58 per cent growth in profit after tax during fiscal 1998-99. The company's PAT grew to Rs 170 crore, against the previous year's Rs 108 crore, marking a compounded annual growth rate of 39 per cent in PAT and 23 per cent in sales in 10 years' time.

RCF posts Rs 198.55cr net: The state-owned Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers has achieved a turnover of Rs 2,050 crore for the financial year 1998-99, registering an increase of 18 per cent. The company's net profit has also risen to Rs 198.55 crore, against Rs 189.37 crore in the previous year.

BT, VSNLaccusation: British Telecom has accused the state-owned VSNL of not responding to its offer for a promo to enable fans to keep in touch with cricketers, but VSNL has shot back saying that it was never approached. The domestic telecom major has gone a step forward and said that it is trying to provide commentary on the Net and possibly even a webcast of the matches.

Reliance Vision: Returns from Reliance Vision, the open-end fund from Reliance Capital Mutual Fund, largely depends on the performance of Reliance Industries on the bourses. The reason - A whopping 37 per cent of the corpus of Reliance Vision is invested in Reliance Industries.

IDBI to raise Rs 10,000 crore: IDBI plans to raise about Rs 10,000 crore this fiscal through both public and private placement of bonds issues. "We are planning to raise about Rs 6,000 crore from the public and Rs 4,000 crore through private placement issues," chairman GP Gupta.

`No Presidential advice to EC': President KR Narayanan has notgiven any advice to the Election Commission regarding the timing of the Lok Sabha elections, a Rashtrapati Bhavan release has said. Commenting on media reports that Narayanan favoured "this date or that date" for the elections, the release said, conduct of elections is the responsibility of the commission under Article 324 of the Constitution.

DMK meeting today: A crucial meeting of the DMK's adminstrative committee will be held in Chennai on Saturday to chalk out the party's strategy for the Lok Sabha polls. he meeting is likely to decide on the alliances it will have in the forthcoming elections.

Gholap interrogated: Sleuths of the economic offences wing of the city police on Friday interrogated former social welfare minister Baban Gholap for his alleged involvement in the Rs 4.5-crore Awami Bank scam.

Election schedule: Chief election commissioner MS Gill said in the capital on Friday that the schedule for the Lok Sabha elections would be decided after hearing the views of therepresentatives of all the recognised politial parties on May 3. The meeting has been convened to discuss all issues to ensure free, fair and transparent polls.

End of 1998-99 meeting: By the time the 1998/99 meeting at Mumbai draws to a dreary end late Saturday afternoon, some 425 events would have been run. The number is down from the peak of a couple of years ago, and seems unlikely to ever reach that level in the foreseeable future.