NEW DELHI -- A public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed against the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), its chairman and managing director B K Syngal and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Bombay High Court alleging large scale financial irregularities in the functioning of the Communications Ministry and the VSNL, the approved PSU responsible for international long distance communications.

The PIL was filed in the court of Justice S N Variava and A Y Sakhre in the Bombay High Court on Monday last and is scheduled to come for hearing tomorrow. Apart from alleging financial irregularities in the functioning of the Navratna PSU, the petition has also accused VSNL of leasing its office premises to private foreign telecom companies like British Telecom and ICO at low rents and also allowing them access to confidential information.

The petition states that "huge funds and allocations have systematically beenmisapplied and misused in financially unviable projects (by the DoT and VSNL) against the advice of their own financial consultants." The petition further states that "this has led to no returns on these huge investments, the burden of which is ultimately borne by the customers.

HLL questions Sebi order

NEW DELHI -- Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) today questioned Securities and Exchange Board of India's (SEBI) powers to adjudicate and order compensation to Unit Trust of India (UTI) in the case of alleged insider trading in the shares of Brooke Bond Lipton India Ltd (BBLIL). ``The Sebi Act do not give any adjudicatory powers. Under law it is only a regulator,'' HLL counsel Harish Salve told Finance Ministry, the appellate authority. HLL is appealing against the Sebi order to prosecute five of its directors and directing the Indian subsidiary of multinational Unilever plc to pay UTI Rs 3.04 crore as compensation in the insider trading case.

Sebi ordered on March 11 that it would launch criminalprosecution against the multinational and its five directors -- former chairman S M Datta, present chairman K B Dadiseth and vice chairman R Gopalakrishnan, A Lahiri and M K Sharma. The market regulator today gave the assurance that it would not take any precipitatory action till the pendency of the appeal. HLL had bought eight lakh shares of BBLIL from UTI two weeks prior to the announcement of the merger at a price of Rs 350 per share on March 25, 1996.