Recently, Congress Spokesperson and National Secretary of the Indian Youth Congress, Roshni Kushal Jaiswal shared a short video on the ‘financial health’ of Indian telecom service provider, BSNL. In her post, she gave misleading figures to allege that BSNL has been “ruined” under the BJP-led NDA government. She also falsely claimed that the national telecom service provider had registered profit when the Congress-led UPA was in power.
In the video and text, the Congress spokesperson
However, the numbers she quoted in her post are grossly incorrect. Contrary to the figures quoted by the Congress functionary, BSNL was not even in profit in 2013. Rather it was in a loss of Rs 14979 crores.
झूट बोलो, बार-बार झूट बोलो।@roshnikushal का यही काम है।
— Shashank Shekhar Jha (@shashank_ssj) July 13, 2024
2013 में BSNL 10183 करोड़ के मुनाफ़े में नहीं, बल्कि 14979 करोड़ घाटे में थी।
2023 में BSNL 13356 करोड़ के घाटे में नहीं बल्कि 8161 करोड़ के घाटे में थी।
सरकार को संज्ञान लेना चाहिए व कांग्रेसियों पर कार्रवाई करनी चाहिए। https://t.co/qzwJaz3Zng pic.twitter.com/4aqYBsudJD
Similarly, BSNL registered a loss of Rs 8,161 crore in FY2023 and not Rs 13,356 crores as the Congress functionary falsely claimed.
The claim that BSNL was profiting in 2013, the last full financial year when the UPA government was in power is “Fake”. It is pertinent to note that BSNL’s profit steeply started declining after 2005 and FY 2009-10 was the first time when BSNL started incurring losses. Incidentally, it was the time when the UPA government was in power and the country, especially, the telecom sector was rocked by one scam after another.
Contrary to the allegations that the Modi-led NDA government caused the ill-health of BSNL, the following snippets from media reports are examples of how the allegations of corruption and scams during the UPA era “ruined” the Telecom sector and dented BSNL’s financial health to such an extent that since 2009-10 when it incurred losses for the first time, it has not earned the profitable territory. It adversely impacted the basic infrastructure of the telecom service provider.
UPA-era Ministers who were at the helm of affairs in the telecom sector had faced serious allegations of corruption, while the Former Cabinet Ministers have avoided jail terms in these cases on grounds of lack of evidence, hampered BSNL to a great extent.
On the contrary, the Modi government has made multiple efforts to revive the ailing telecom service provider including the announcement of three revival packages for BSNL.
The first revival package was announced in October 2019. It was worth Rs 69,000 and it helped stabilise BSNL as it brought down excessive employee expenses and in FY21 BSNL losses were nearly halved.
After the second revival package announced in 2022 which was worth Rs 1.64 lakh crore, average revenue per user for BSNL/MTNL started seeing improvements. Post revival plans, the telecom service provider has marked a drop in losses.
Post the two revival packages, BSNL started witnessing operating profit from FY 2020-21.
Last year in June, the Modi government announced a third revival package worth Rs 89,047 crores for the state telecom provider. It included allotment of 4G/5G spectrum for BSNL through equity infusion. Additionally, the union cabinet increased the authorised capital for BSNL from Rs 1.5 lakh crore to Rs 2.1 lakh crore, allowing it to raise more funds from the market for its growth.
As per reports, the BSNL officials in January this year revealed that its income has gone up, and expenses have also been cut down in 2023-24.
