Sugar lobby under Pawar to enter insurance sector
Mumbai: Two separate companies, Indian Co-operative Life Insurance Company and Indian Co-operative General Insurance Company, have been formed by the powerful sugar lobby headed by former Maharashtra chief minister, Mr. Sharad Pawar, to enter into the insurance business. Each of these companies have a share capital of Rs 200 crore.

The decision to have a start-up capital of Rs 200 crore for each of the companies comes at a time when several corporate promoters are struggling to raise the minimum prescribed capital of Rs 100 crore.

The co-operatives plans to raise the corpus required for this ventuer through Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank, district and urban cooperative banks and all major sugar cooperatives. Besides, these proposed companies will come out with shares of Rs 100 to raise the necessary funds.
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Cable TV act amendment approved by cabinet
New Delhi: Cable operators currently offer DD to viewers, but the reception is so bad that very few people watch it. Under the new norms, not only will the cable operators be required to offer the service, but also take responsibility for the clarity of transmission.

Besides empowering the government to ban obscene advertisement, the amendment would also make it mandatory for the cable TV operators to beam at least three Doordarshan channels — DD-1, DD-2 and one regional channel. Cable operators currently offer DD to viewers, but the reception is so bad that very few people watch it. Under the new norms, not only will the cable operators be required to offer the service, but also take responsibility for the clarity of transmission.

The amendment bill will be introduced in the monsoon session of Parliament for its approval.

The amendment is primarily aimed at channels uplinked from abroad. Presently, the TV channels which uplink from India such as DD channels, BITV, Enadu, Vijay and Sun generally follow the existing programme and the advertisement code.
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While competition complains of choking, VSNL demands national ISP status
Chennai: Leading private internet service provider, Dishnet, is accusing Videsh Sanchar Nigam of trying to "choke it to death", by demanding 70 per cent advance payment for 155 mbps bandwidth. Dishnet claims this is against the prevailing rules, which call for a 20 per cent upfront payment from a company seeking bandwidth.

Dishnet claims that the immediate provocation for VSNL to make such a move was that Dishnet was among the ISPs lobbying for deregulating the bandwidth market by ending VSNL's monopoly.

In the meanwhile, VSNL has approached the government to grant it the license to take its operations across the country. Currently, VSNL has ISP operations in only 6 cities in India.

According to Mr. S. K. Gutpa, chairman and managing director, VSNL would bid for national long distance telephony when it is opened up and would be willing to pay the fees the government fixes.

On bandwidth, Mr. Gupta said that VSNL reviews its targets every year to adapt to the changing demand. Currently, it has at its disposal a bandwidth of 313 Mbps and proposes to gradually reach 2000 Mbps by the end of March 2001.
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