Large swathes of our country are facing the scourge of left ultras, maoist terrorists who kill people, destroy public property and prevent the development work of government. They are active in areas spanning several states in what’s infamously called the Red Corridor. The LWE contracts involve the installation of Telecom Infrastructure in these areas. These rollouts are financed by allocations from the USO Fund; monies collected from all telecom users by Operators and submitted to the government for creation of public infrastructure. Therefore, we have pursued all developments in this space with maximum scrutiny. This network comprises the rollout of 1,836 sites and the targeted date for completion was September 30, 2015. Till date, the government has completion details for only 687 sites.
We have revealed in previous issues the broad reach of corruption in these contracts, all with the active participation and assistance of BSNL CMD and Directors. The latest revelations that we bring forth in our cover story show how disreputable this whole project has turned out to be.
And it is no audit agency or any investigative journalist; it is the finance wing of the DoT that has revealed the lying, venal character of BSNL babus. Uninstalled sites were shown as “blown-up” sites. BSNL even pocketed the operation and maintenance charges of these non-existent, “blown-up” sites from the USO Fund.
Irregularities and misrepresentation by vendors (VNL & HFCL) are a standard practice in this project. This became evident when processing began for an additional order for Rs 459.25 crore because of augmentations requested by the home ministry for additional BTS sites and VSAT connectivity. Neither is there any adherence to standards and specified formats related to commissioning.
The biggest infra project – BharatNet – in the telecom sector is going nowhere. The venture was originally called NOFN and is a project of high-speed data connectivity for 2.5 lakh Gram Panchyats. On its successful rollout hinges the fate of Digital India and people facing governance through various G2C services. But because of telecom ministry’s inefficiencies, Prime Minister’s Super Priority project is in a pathetic shape both in terms of costs and opportunity. The telecom ministry promised that they would rollout 1 lakh GPs in a year’s time. And what have they delivered – 6,849 GPs by May 7, 2016, less than 3.5 pc of the promise.
The ministry claims that it has laid OFC connecting 50,465 GPs. It has blamed the slowdown on Right of Way troubles. But keeping the customer end installation ready is no RoW issue. It is a big installation failure, particularly when substantial payments have been released (Rs 4,686 crore) by government to BBNL, a public sector vehicle for this project. And lots more has been sanctioned. But all to no avail. For details please read the lead story complete with statistical output.
