The Congress owes MTNL more than Rs 1 crore, while Janata Dal has dues of Rs 1 lakh and BJP Rs 7,000, the minister said.

Total dues of all political parties including members of parliament constitute 10 per cent of the total outsanding dues. She said defaulters have been classified as individual, corporate and political parties. Taking a soft approach towards political parties, the ministry has instructed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to disconnect STD facility on any phone with a due of two months.

DoT was working out some guidelines on recovery of dues to standardise the procedure. "The process has been ad-hoc so far, we want to change it", she added.

Meanwhile, MTNL has extended by two weeks the finalisation of its cellular phone service tenders following demands from multinational bidders.

Thetenders, scheduled to be opened on July 1, will now be processed on July 15, MTNL chairman and managing director S Rajagopalan said.

"Several of the bidders had approached us to extend the date in view of the large preparatory work involved in the post-budget situation," Rajagopalan said. Swedish Ericsson and Finnish Nokia, sought extension as they were reviewing the impact of the customs and excise duty revisions in the union budget. Canadian telecom major Nortel, demanded time to seek some clarifications on the tender documents, Rajagopalan said.

Another bidder Tata-Lucent combine said they needed more time because of large volume of groundwork that was required. Rajagopalan said MTNL had invited bids for cellular network equipment estimated to cost about 1 billion dollars for which offers would be made on the basis of turnkey projects.

Industry sources, however, pointed out that the demand for extension by bidders was primarily a cautious approach by them on account of a litigation before the DelhiHigh Court on MTNL's cellular foray. MTNL had challenged an earlier verdict by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) cancelling its licence to operate value added services. Delhi High Court is expected to pronounce a judgment in the second week of July.