BSNL fails to raise bills of Rs 65 crore

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has failed to recover outstanding to the tune of Rs 65 crore from subscribers due to short billing and non-recovery of revenue.

The telecom major lost Rs 75.62 crore due to non billing or short billing either because of non-receipt of advice notes at its telephone revenue accounting branches, or issuance of bills at old lower tariff, incorrect fixation of rent, non-recovery of service tax and non or short-recovery of revenue. The telecom major managed to recover of Rs 9.17 crore as of October 2003.

The report of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) said improper management of revenue collection, non usage of software driven facilities in West Bengal Telecom circle, along with non implementation of checks and balances led to accumulation of outstanding dues of Rs 1.87 crore on post paid mobile telephony in about four months which remained unrealised for CellOne. The outstanding accumulated soon after the CellOne was launched.

Audit scrutiny by CAG also revealed that the outstanding dues in each cases ranged between Rs 1 lakh and over Rs 12 lakh accumulated for two to three successive monthly bills.

CAG has also pointed out that chances of recovery from these subscribers were remote as courier service failed to deliver the bills to 29 customers out of 31 due to wrong address and for the remaining two no details were made available to audit.

West Bengal Telecom circle however had stated that threshold server had not operated or in certain cases not implemented. Further as it was an unique case it was not practicable to monitor such huge outstanding even after setting call detail records.

Nevertheless, bulk of dues was because of continuance of telephone facilities despite default in payment which resulted in an accumulation of Rs 37.45 crore.

It also suffered a hit from non or short realisation of rent to the tune of Rs 16.42 crore in 14 telecom circles. This was mainly because BSNL failed to issue bills, recover license fee along with advance rental and installation charges on upgradation of exchange capacity.

The department also failed to realise Rs 6.24 crore due to non-receipt of completed advice notes in Telephone Revenue Accounting branches.

The WB Telecom Circle of BSNL also failed to deposit into the bank cheques, drafts and banker's cheques amounting to Rs 1.14 crore "" leading to a loss of the same amount.