BSNL Officers' Association holds agitation in Nashik

Nashik, June 29 (UNI) The Sanchar Nigam Executives Association - India (SNEA-I) of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) Nashik division today held a 'dharna' outside Sanchar Bhavan here.

The agitation was part of the nationwide protests by the SNEA against the policies of the government and delay in procurement of Second Generation (2G) and Third Generation (3G) mobile equipments.

''This agitation is for the very exisitence of BSNL,'' M B Sangale, District Secretary, (SNEA-I), Nashik said today.

Currently BSNL is facing an extremely critical situation and appears to have reached a point of complete saturation in mobile telephony sector. Nearly a year ago, tenders for the purchase of 45.5 million GSM lines were approved. Orders, however, could not be placed due to some legal proceedings following a case filed by Motorola, he said.

This case was withdrawn by Motorola two months ago. However, no purchase orders have been placed so far. This intervening period has been fully utilised by private operators to expand their customer base and enlarge their market share, he complained.

The premier State-owned BSNL has now been relegated to the third position from its earlier second position in the GSM sector.

Hutchison Essar Limited (HEL) added 1.5 million new subscribers against BSNL's 0.24 million in May 2007 alone. Hutch had a total base of 29.2 million subscribers in May 2007 as against BSNL's reasonably static 27.9 million subscribers.

BSNL is now displaced to the 4th position, as cellular operators in terms of combined growth of CDMA and GSM with Bharti Airtel (40.7 million user base), Reliance Communications (30.5 million user base) and HEL (29.2 millio user base), at first, second and third positions respectively, according to SNEA office bearers.

Meanwhile, 200 SNEA members participated in the agitation today.

Malegaon MP Harishchandra Chavan visited the agitators and assured them that he would raise the issue in the next session of the Parliament.

M B Sangale, S A Bhadane, V J Daviddas, S V Bhad and other office-bearers were part of the agitation.

UNI