Govt not to bring Kalyan, Virar under MTNL ambit

Neeraj Jha

Mumbai, Aug 8: The government seems to have decided against bringing the telecom districts of Virar and Kalyan, currently under the Maharashtra telecom district of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), under Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL).

Though there is no official communique from the communications ministry in this regard, it is reliably learnt, that the ministry has more or less dropped the idea after finding it “unworkable”.

“The ministry has deferred the matter for now. Effectively, it has been put into the cold storage,” sources said. The reasons being the “difficulties in the way of the proposed merger”.

“The merger would not have been easy. There may have been some conflict in licence areas. It may have involved compensation of some sort to the existing players” sources said.

Redefining circles may well have shortened the licence areas of existing operators in the Maharashtra circle namely, BPL Cellular and BTAL (Birla-Tata-At&T) which operate cellular service and Hughes Tele.com that operates basic service.

There were other issues with regard to transfer of assets (from BSNL to MTNL) including the 8,000-strong staff besides redefining the respective licence areas.

Members of Parliament (MP) had made a representation to communications minister Ram Vilas Paswan urging him to merge the BSNL telecom districts with MTNL. Consumer bodies had taken up the matter with the MPs as they thought the merger would ensure the users not only a better quality of service but also a whole range of telecom and related services that MTNL offers.

MTNL, on its part, should not be, too, unhappy about the development. One, the network in the two telecom districts of BSNL in reference, namely Virar and Kalyan, is dated and upgrading would have entailed significant investments.

Two, Group C and Group D employees of BSNL’s 8,000-strong workforce in these two circles will have to be absorbed by MTNL.