“The whole matter was analysed in detail and root cause analysis of the problem was done. Request was also made to direct BBNL to overcome systemic deficiencies which are still existing and well known to all decision makers,” said the BSNL’s stern response to DoT secretary Aruna Sundararajan who had flayed both the organisation for not fulfilling their responsibilities in maintaining and optimally using the BharatNet network.

BSNL said that it would be unfair to take any action against any of its officials asserting that BSNL has done its job well on its responsibility portion of the prestigious project which covers only the optical fibre management and its officials are not responsible for any negligence that may have been done by other agencies (BBNL). The PSU has also told DoT that BBNL has not even been releasing funds for the O&M by BSNL and Rs 617 crore are pending as dues with BBNL. “BSNL has incurred lot of expenditure to facilitate its field unit with required tools & testers to carry out O&M of BharatNet. Till date on this account only Rs 333 crore and Rs 617 crore are pending for payment. In present cash crunch position of BSNL, it is becoming more and more difficult to meet the expenses of O&M of BharatNet for which circles are demanding funds,” the letter says.

Assignment of all GP faults summary to BSNL, is neither justified nor called for. The optical fiber failures only should be assigned to BSNL. For that purpose it has also sought DoT’s response to segregate the responsibilities. The state operator has told its parent that it is doing maintenance work in many states where it should have been done by PGCIL and RailTel. “BBNL has assigned maintenance work of Gujarat, Odisha, Pudduchery, Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli to BSNL, which were supposed to be done by RailTel and PGCIL,” it said.

BSNL has sought segregation of responsibilities to be undertaken by DoT for avoiding this kind of situation and stated in the letter that “in view of all above issues related to maintenance of GPs for such a prestigious project it is requested that all faults reported may be got segregated by the maintenance agency (BBNL) and faults pertaining to optical fiber cable only should be assigned to BSNL.”

Another letter by BSNL director (enterprise) NK Mehta to telecom secretary said that in absence of detailed segregation of faults, if BSNL is being asked to take disciplinary actions against its officers, it will be unjustified to punish them for faults beyond their area of responsibility but BSNL will take necessary fault repairs of BharatNet without waiting for BBNL and if any of its officials found to be neglecting on their duty, it will also take disciplinary action.