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State-owned telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is expected to turnaround, generating net profit in fiscal year 2026-27, with the implementation of the revival measures, Parliament was informed on Friday.
In a written reply in Rajya Sabha, Devusinh Chauhan, Minister of State for Communications said losses of BSNL were pegged at ₹3,589 crore in April-September 2022-23 as it clocked an income of ₹9,366 crore and incurred total expenditure of ₹12,956 crore.
He informed that in 2021-22, losses stood at ₹6,982 crore, against income of ₹19,052 crore and expenditure of ₹ 26,034 crore.
The Cabinet had approved a revival package for both BSNL and MTNL in 2019 and further in July 2022, it had cleared a ₹ 1.64 lakh crore revival package for BSNL. The revival measures focus on infusing fresh capital for upgrading BSNL services, allocating spectrum, de-stressing its balance sheet, and augmenting its fibre network by merging Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL) with BSNL.
As part of the Cabinet approval, a capex of ₹ 22,471 crore has been approved for the telco as equity infusion over a period of four years from 2022-23 to 2025-26 through budgetary allocation.
Data Anonymisation
Meanwhile, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha has informed that the government had withdrawn guidelines on data anonymisation to ensure harmonisation with other policies that were in the works.
The government had uploaded draft guidelines on data anonymisation on August 30 last year, but pulled it down after about a week.
In response to question by Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi on whether the government intends to republish the guidelines for public consultations, Chandrasekhar said other policies such as the National Data Governance Policy announced in the Budget 2023, with reference to which consistency was to be ensured, are not yet in place.
In another written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Anupriya Patel said Taiwanese companies are participating in various programmes launched by the government to boost the electronics manufacturing and semiconductor ecosystem in India and added that India is not engaged with Taiwan for any help related to the 5G services rollout.
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