People's Democracy

Reliance Cheats BSNL

BSNLEU Dharna On November 3

THE BSNL Employees Union (BSNLEU) has demanded the union government and the BSNL management to file criminal charges against the Reliance company for cheating the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a public sector company, and causing loss of thousands of crores of rupees to it.

The modus operandi of the Reliance fraud is as follows, according to the union: For receiving incoming ISD calls, the private telecom operators have to pay an Access Deficit Charge (ADC) of Rs 4.25 per minute to the BSNL. The ADC for routing local calls is Rs 0.55 only.  The Reliance has been cheating the BSNL by technically manipulating the ISD calls to BSNL as local calls and for many months has been paying ADC of local calls only. The loss to BSNL comes to about Rs 50 lakh to Rs 500 lakh or more. The total loss to BSNL may run into thousands of crores of rupees, according to the union’s statement released on October 26, 2004.

It also pointed out that it was not the first time that Reliance has been caught cheating and committing fraud. It was pulled up by the TRAI for unauthorisedly providing all India roaming facility to its WLL subscribers. When the fraud was detected, the then NDA government bailed the company out by imposing a small penalty and changing to unified licensing policy.  The employees union expressed apprehension that Reliance may once again try to influence the government to bail it out. It demanded that this should not be allowed.

The union further demanded the government and BSNL management to take stringent action against the company for cheating and indulging in fraud by filing criminal charges. It wanted the government to recover the amount lost by the BSNL from Reliance while also cancelling its licence.

The BSNLEU called upon the workers through out the country to organise dharnas/protest demonstrations on November 3, 2004 demanding stringent action against Reliance.  (INN)