Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) on Monday informed the Mumbai high court that it had disconnected telephone lines of 86 members of Parliament who had defaulted in paying outstanding bills on June 10. MTNL submitted a list of MPs which includes Rajmata Vijayraje Scindia, K Karunakaran, Subramaniyan Swamy, MM Sayeed, ABA Ghanikhan Choudhary, K Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy, Ramvilas Paswan, Mukul Wasnik, Mohan Rawale, Vilas Muttewar, Sanjay Singh, Digvijay Singh and YS Rajesekhar Reddy.

Hearing a public interest litigation, Chief Justice YK Sabrahwal and Justice SH Kapadia directed MTNL and the Union government to file separate affidavits within four weeks on what steps they had taken to recover telephone dues of former MPs of the 12th LS.

Opposing the petition, MTNL submitted that as on June 11, it had recovered Rs 2.39 crore out of the total outstanding amount of Rs 15.50 crore. Of this, Rs 26.58 lakh and Rs 43.54 lakh were recovered fromformer MPs and sitting MPs of RS respectively, while Rs 74.09 lakh and Rs 95.36 lakh from former MPs and those of the dissolved LS respectively.