Congress treated PSUs like BSNL as cash cows: Vaishnaw in RS

Vaishnaw said the BBNL is being merged with the BSNL not because the former is a failure, but to help reduce the cost friction between the two

Insisting that the Centre is committed to reviving State-run telecom company BSNL, Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday said the previous Congress Government treated PSU telecom companies BSNL and BBNL as "cash cows".

Replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Vaishnaw said the BSNL and the BBNL (Bharat Broadband Network) had been merged, and the joint network is helping add more than one lakh connections in villages every month. Today, the data consumption in these connections is close to 120 GB per month, he said.

Criticising the Congress, he said the BSNL was a very healthy company, and so was MTNL. "But Between 2004 and 2014, the kind of treatment meted out to these companies by people sitting in the Opposition benches now, who treated them like cash cows. How these companies were destroyed — there are many examples," the minister said.

Highlighting the revival package, the minister said, "In 2019, the first package of Rs 70,000 crore was given to the BSNL, and it came in operating profit. In July, another package of Rs 1.64 lakh crore was given to the BSNL."

Vaishnaw said India was earlier dependent on foreign countries for the latest technologies in the telecom sector, but now, 4G and 5G would be rolled out by these companies soon.

The minister said 15 lakh km of the unified network had been created by merging the BBNL and the BSNL. Gujarat is the first state where the fibre network has reached all the villages, he claimed.