SC bars govt plea on telecom staff

Under the plan proposed in September, it was BSNL, MTNL, or straight to the ‘surplus cell’ in the Ministry of Personnel and Training for them. Each of these offers has a snag as far as the officials are concerned.

While BSNL and MTNL are hardly enthused by the possible need to absorb them, the officials themselves claim to be at sea in the corporatised telecom companies.

On the other hand, going back to the DoT is of equally little use to them, as many are engineers. The department does not need them, as it hived off BSNL, and then MTNL, into separate corporate entities by the early nineties.

The five-year deputation of these Group A ITS officials in the PSUs, therefore, ended in acrimony. A contingency plan was drawn up for MTNL and BSNL after the officials refused to be permanently stationed in them.

This plan proposed to hire engineers from the army to run BSNL and MTNL in case they fell short of staff.

DoT also agreed to hiring help through retired staffers or promoting Group B officials to take over tasks that the Group A officials would have been expected to perform.

The Cabinet also recently approved a package for the ITS officials, which included a 25 per cent pay hike for for those to be absorbed in BSNL and MTNL. The package also left room for retired officials and the Army if it was rejected by the ITS Association. It did not, in fact, find the association’s approval, which has now secured a status quo at the centre from the Supreme Court.

Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran had on Thursday ruled out any further negotiations with the Indian Telecom Service Association (ITSA), saying the deadline for absorption into the telecom PSUs had already expired on October 10.