PESB recommends MTNL chief PK Purwar for BSNL CMD post

The Public Enterprise Selection Board Tuesday recommended MTNL CMD PK Purwar as successor of his BSNL counterpart Anupam Shrivastava, who will superannuate by June this year.

"PESB recommended the following name for the post of Chairman and Managing Director, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL): Pravin Kumar Purwar," PESB said in its recommendation.

Shrivastava was appointed BSNL CMD about one and half year after PESB recommended his name for the post. During Shrivastava's tenure, BSNL reported an operating profit of Rs 672 crore for 2014-15, aided by a fall in administrative costs and jump in revenue.

Despite negligible investment support from the government compared to private firms, BSNL succeeded in enhancing its mobile customer base.

BSNL outperformed private sector rivals such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular in net subscriber additions in 2017-18.

Purwar was appointed CMD of loss making state-owned telecom Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited in March 2017. He has submitted plan to revive MTNL which is yet to be approved by the government.

MTNL has requested the government to take back unutilised land and assets valued at around Rs 19,300 crore and pare its debt of around Rs 19,000 crore.