The raid party detected that the Major had managed to get a proper licence for 200 phone lines for his recently constituted firm, Dev Communications Pvt Ltd. Immediately thereafter, he had allegedly diverted the phone lines to his private exchange to make international calls at local call rates, thus defrauding the DoT of revenue.

Investigations have revealed that the suspect attached the officially leased phone lines to his computer through a dialogue card. This card, in turn, was hooked to a satellite antenna facilitating making and receiving international calls. The investigation team has affirmed that this would have not been possible without the connivance of the service provider. Also, the fact that most users of the telephone exchange belonged to Delhi was immaterial as far as the basics of the fraud were concerned, they argued. The wireless and co-ordination cell of DoT, which deals with such operations, has claimed that its field functionaries had lost revenue of about Rs 3 crore.

Telecom experts, however, are more concerned about the national security aspect. None except some `classified' agencies are allowed to use this facility, they say. The Gurgaon telecom department has, therefore, constituted two separate committees to prepare details of activities of companies in the district having 10 or more phone connections. This list would soon be made public. Extra vigilance has been ordered around companies that have been granted `leased data circuits.' Cooperative sugar mill does well

A team of sugar and sugarcane experts from Asia-Pacific countries recently visited the cooperative sugar mills at Palwal (Haryana), officially rated as "all-round best" by the Kanpur-based National Sugar Institute. Mainly by proper man-management and a few hard decisions, the mills have picked up performance.

The state government has not added any new machines but has taken steps to motivate workers in various ways. It has also taken steps to introduce new high-yielding sugarcane strains evolved at the mills' own farm and educating the growers to so plan the sowing that the entire crop does not mature together. All these have done magic, according to officials of Sugarfed (Haryana State Coop Supply & Marketing Federation).

The 12-member team representing the `network for the development of agricultural cooperatives' (NEDAC) has drawn experts from, among others, China, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

In fact, the mills' general manager, Mr Sehrawat told the visiting NADEC experts that "the National Sugar Institute had, last year sent samples of his mills sugar for guidance to conform to globally best sugar of M-30 parameters." He later told The Financial Express that during the current crushing season, his mills had crushed about 21 lakh quintals of sugarcane against about 19 lakh quintals in the corresponding period last year. By the time crushing closes, the mill hopes to crush an all-time high of 26 lakh tonnes. The machinery has an installed capacity to crush only 12,500 quintals per day. But as of now it is crushing 17,000 to 18,000 quintals per day, which implies better utilisation of machinery.

So far, the mill has produced about two lakh quintals. Of this, more than 73 per cent is of M-30 parameters. By the time the crushing season comes to an end ,on April 25, Mr Sehrawat hopes to achieve 10 per cent sugar recovery per quintal. Already, the average recovery percentage has touched 9.72.

Power pilferage probe
Following large-scale protest against the steep hike in power tariff on all categories of consumers, the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HREC) has directed the Haryana Vidyut Prasan Nigam (HVPN) to appoint an independent agency to conduct a survey to find ways of plugging leakage of substantial revenue by industry and urban consumers. This agency will also verify HVPN's allegation that in some urban pockets/feeders the "line losses" are being registered to the extent of 75 per cent. This is decidedly not the extent of "line losses" but pilferage, it is felt.

A sizeable section of the ruling Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) legislators feel that though rural consumers numerically defaulted more in payment of electricity bills than urbanites, but pilferage was negligible on rural feeders. The independent agency, if appointed as desired by the HREC, could also look into this aspect, they feel.

Lok Adalats in all districts
Haryana plans to set up Lok Adalats-a statutory forum for resolving legal disputes amicably, expeditiously and without filing formal suits-in all the 19 districts. The proposal has been okayed, in principle, both by the state government and the Punjab & Haryana high court.

Even cases pending in the regular courts can be referred to the Lok Adalat under Section 20(1) of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987. According to official sources, at present only Bhiwani, Hissar, Ambala, Faridabad, Panchkula and Gurgaon have Lok Adalats, each headed by a retired district & sessions judge.