Dot Draws Flak Over Maharashtra Rural Network

The visiting delegation headed by Veena Varma, a Congress M.P, expressed unhappiness regarding the network status of DoT in Maharashtra ,according to a highly placed source.

The committee expressed its specific unhappiness regarding the total number of villages provided with telephone connections which stood at 23,606, out of a total number of 40,023 villages in the state, by end September 1996. Almost 50 per cent of the total number of villages in Mumbai are without a single telephone connection.

Moreover, the committee felt that the telephone density in rural Maharashtra was dismal by the high standards prevailing in Mumbai.

The plan of the government to provide a telephone to each village faced hurdles since most single line villages had unpaid bills, according to an insider. The telephone density in rural Maharashtra was 1.50 per hundred which is near the nations average of one telephone per 100 of the population.

However Goa, another state which falls under the Maharashtra Circle, has a telephone density of 5.15 per hundred. While the committee expressed unhappiness regarding rural connections in Maharashtra, MTNL which manages Mumbai ensured that telephone density in Mumbai city equalled the international density average of 11 per hundred of the population.

Maharashtra Telecom has installed 2.17 direct exchange lines in 1995-96 which is the highest for any telecom circle in the country.

According to sources within Maharashtra Telecom the political fetish for linking all villages by telephone, irrespective of commercial viability is unjust and would result in additional burden on the financial resources of the circle.