NHAI abandons plan to wire up highways
New Delhi: More than a year after unveiling its ambitious plan of laying telecom ducts along the 10,000-km-long Golden Quadrilateral and North-South corridor, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has finally abandoned the exercise citing the low demand for optical fibre capacity.

According to official sources, the NHAI Chairman has written to Mr B.C. Khanduri, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, stating that the project has finally been shelved since it may be unviable, given the low demand for optical fibre capacity, even as many other telecom companies have huge excess capacity lying idle. The Minister had sought a status report on the issue from the Authority recently.
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CBDT compiling Data Bank On High Value Deals
New Delhi: The central board of direct taxes (CBDT) is preparing a data bank of high value transactions to try and deal with tax evasion. This exercise will cover individual and corporate assessees. The taxman will set a structure for electronic data interchange with departments involved in transactions like banks, stock exchanges, telephone companies and regional transport authorities.
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DoT may seek clarifications from TDSAT
New Delhi: The Department of Telecommunications is likely to rush to the Telecom Dispute Settlement Tribunal to clear the confusion over whether an amendment to the basic service licence is required to keep the distinction between limited mobility (WLL) and cellular services. This follows the latest threat by the private basic operators to resort to litigation if any changes are made to their licence conditions.
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Nitish Kumar rules out Railway PSUs sell-off
New Delhi: THE Railways Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, has ruled out disinvestment of companies such as RITES, IRCON and CONCOR that are under his Ministry.

"As of now, the Government has decided to keep Railway public sector undertakings (PSUs) out of the disinvestment process. All Railway PSUs are doing extremely well and there is no need to consider their divestment," Mr Kumar said at the inauguration of the corporate office of Rites Ltd at Gurgaon last evening.
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