Announcing this, Lok Sabha Speaker N Balayogi told the House that the quota would be restricted for allotment in every member's constituency.

He said the decision was taken in consultation with the Ministers for Parliamentary Affairs, Communications and Petroleum and Natural Gas.

The announcement was greeted with thumping of desks by members who had been deprived of the facility for sometime.

CELLULAR LICENCES: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has not accepted the contention of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) that a national loss of Rs 467.36 crore was incurred due to defective fixation of licence fee for private cellular phone operators in four metro cities.

Communications Minister Sushma Swaraj told Lok Sabha during question hour that cellular mobile telephone service (CMTs), which was proposed tobe started in four metros in the early '90, was a new service even by global standards and there was no historical data based on which accurate demand projections could be made.

At best, a rough estimate of the number of subscribers and traffic in terms of air time generated by them could be made for fixing licence fee for eight licences granted to private operators, the Minister said.

According to CAG, DOT did not make a realistic projection of demand for CMTs and fixed annual lumpsum licence fee for first three years on the basis of grossly understated projection of demand made by one of the bidders.

CAG has also contended that DOT has failed to incorporate suitable provision in the licence agreement for charging higher licence fee if the actual demand was more than the projections for the first three years.

Asked about any action government proposed to take in the light of CAG's report, Swaraj said the matter is still under correspondence with the audit and the question of fixing responsibilitywould arise only after CAG takes a final view.

Maintaining that the estimated loss of Rs 467.36 crore was purely notional, DoT said even if the point about low licence fee was conceded, since cellular market is highly price elastic, the low licence fee resulted in these operators offering the customers an affordable service, consequently stimulating demand as well as greater usage of the service.

It said the greater volume of traffic generated generally passes through DoT network.

This additional volume of traffic between the cellular network and the DoT network, would result in additional revenues for DoT as the private operator is required to pay to it for calls terminating in its network, it said.

"If this additional revenue is taken into account, the notional loss may turn out to be non-existent," it said.

The objective of the government was to promote this new business which was considered to be very attractive from the foreign investment angle, DoT said adding that fixing a very high licencefee in the initial years would have inhibited the market demand.

BIO-DIVERSITY LAW: The government is considering a proposal to enact a law on biological diversity, the Lok Sabha was informed today.

The proposal is aimed at regulating access to genetic material and creation of a mechanism to regulate such access, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Babulal Marandi told G Ganga Reddy in a written answer.