PM was misled on phone freebies, alleges Sushma

This, according to Swaraj is complete claptrap. For one, her proposal related to retiring employees. Based on the average level of retirement from the department of telecom services, that translated to around 3,000 people per year — not 3.5 lakh at one go, as proposed by Paswan. Consequently, Swaraj’s proposal would cost a fraction of Paswan’s.

In any case, in the current case, no employee is retiring, all that is happening is that their employer will change from the DTS to the new corporation — so where’s the question of giving them retirement benefits in the form of free calls. `When MTNL was formed out of the DoT around a decade ago’, Swaraj argued, `none of the employees retired.’ Stretching the argument, she deadpanned: `or are we saying that MTNL consists of retired DoT employees.’

In any case, if this logic of retirement was being used to justify Paswan’s dole, was the government going to give these 3.5 lakh employees all other retirement benefits like their pension, gratuity, and so on?

Swaraj’s ire, of course, looks all the more justified today, given that the most basic justification of the dole has backfired today. After the much-publicised meeting of Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and Ram Vilas Paswan with the PM, the Principal Secretary had triumphantly briefed the press, stating that the free phone proposal had been okayed by the PM as this would get the DTS employees to agree to the corporatisation proposal — given that the unions have been bitterly opposing corporatisation for the past 3 years, getting them around was a major achievement. And Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra clearly thought so when he briefed the media — that’s also why Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha held his piece, not just then but even later, though he had been a bitter critic of the dole till just a day earlier.

Unfortunately for Paswan, Sinha, Mishra, and the Prime Minister, the telecom unions spoilt their party. Just a few days later, the major unions said that the free phone proposal had nothing to do with corporatisation. To underscore their point, they asked that the government prepare a white paper to justify their demand for corporatisation as well as to explain why further disinvestment was being planned in MTNL.