UP Govt to BSNL: Don’t touch VIP phone defaulters

The Uttar Pradesh government is the largest subscriber of BSNL, with 1,300 phone connections installed at the offices and residences of ministers, principal secretaries and secretaries. In its drive to realise pending bills, BSNL had recently disconnected many telephone connections.

Barring 26, all of Uttar Pradesh’s 60 ministers owe money to BSNL, including Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav himself. Among the biggest defaulters is his younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav, who owes as much as Rs 1.18 lakh to BSNL on his residential phone line.

Venkatachalam seeks in his letter that these defaulters, along with bureaucrats, be put in a special category and that their phones be exempt from being disconnected. He also attached with the letter a list of all ministers, including who owes what (a copy of which is with The Indian Express), and asked telephone authorities to ‘‘sanction a special place to UP Government Secretariat and keep it in the ‘exempt category’, considering it is BSNL’s bulk consumer’’.

Talking to The Indian Express, Venkatachalam defended the letter and added that the state government had for long been trying to persuade BSNL to agree to the arrangement, though this is the first written communication. ‘‘We are the largest consumer of BSNL and paying huge amounts,’’ he says. ‘‘Sometimes there is delay in payments, but certainly we are not defaulters.’’ Apart from Mulayam and his brother, the other ministers on BSNL’s defaulter list are Ashok Bajpai, Hari Shankar Tiwari, Ram Pyare Singh, Virendra Singh Bundela, Kailash and others. Asked about his pending bill, Tiwari defended: ‘‘It is not the responsibility of the ministers to keep track of their official phones. It is the Secretariat Department that should pay the bills.’’ BSNL authorities are quiet on the matter. BSNL Principal General Manager (Lucknow Telephones) V S Srivastava told The Indian Express: ‘‘Though the ministers do not fall in any special category, BSNL, in most cases where ministers and bureaucrats are involved, does not disconnect lines as a goodwill gesture.’’ The decision on a special category, he adds, is a policy matter and could be taken up only at the headquarters level.