Gram panchayat net connectivity project deadline pushed by 17 months to August ’21

The current deadlines for the completion of phases one and two of the scheme was March 2020.

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The deadlines for the BharatNet project, which initially began as the National Optical Fibre Network in October 2011, have been pushed for the fifth time now.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has pushed the deadline for completing the gram panchayat (GP) internet connectivity scheme, BharatNet, by 17 months to August 2021. The current deadlines for the completion of phases one and two of the scheme was March 2020.

The deadlines for the BharatNet project, which initially began as the National Optical Fibre Network in October 2011, have been pushed for the fifth time now. In 2011, the Centre had initially said that project to connect all the 2.5 lakh GPs would be completed within the next two years. The deadline was later pushed back by 24 months to December 2015. Between 2011 and 2014, barely any work was done as the government had managed to lay down only 350 km of optical fibre as against a target of 350,000 km.

With a change of government in 2014, the project — re-christened as BharatNet — aimed to connect with internet all 2.5 lakh GPs and make them service ready by 2018. In 2018, the target for completion of BharatNet was pushed back by 12 months to March 2019, and later revised to March 2020. The project, initially conceptualised in 2011, has been delayed for over 92 months now.

As reported earlier by The Indian Express, while the Centre aimed to connect via internet and make 2.5 lakh GPs service ready by March 2020, under all phases of the BharatNet project, only 1.34 lakh GPs had been made service ready as on January 31, 2020.

In his reply to a question in the Lok Sabha Wednesday, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad confirmed the report that as of February 28, only 1.34 lakh GPs had been made service ready.

He also said that while Right of Way issues had so far delayed the Centre-led project, delay in the state-led model was “adversely affecting the completion of the project”.

To cover up for the lag in the scheme, the DoT has now roped in the private sector in a public-private-partnership model.