GUWAHATI, June 16 – While the BSNL is not exactly known as a quality service provider, drawing flak from the public for its slack services, the recent spurt in the number of bills served to customers showing huge amounts of arrears dating back to years has shocked the people. The aggrieved customers feel that the BSNL authorities are taking them for a ride for no fault of theirs. Or how else would one explain the serving of a bill showing huge arrears whereas the customer had actually paid the bill. Rajiv Sharma, who was served with such a bill, however, managed to refrain from paying the amount as he could produce the receipt of the bill paid earlier. But not all the people tend to keep all the old bills, and are now having a tough time.
“What the BSNL is doing is absolutely absurd and devoid of any reasoning,” consumer rights activist Prof Deven Dutta said. Dutta himself has been served with a bill showing an accumulated arrear of Rs 14,460 for the period from July 1997 to January 2000. “Whether it is telephone or electricity or water, I can lay my claim to be a very good paymaster, and I take pains to collect bills personally when they are not delivered on time,” he said.
Prof Dutta’s is not the only case. Many people have received bills containing huge arrears whereas they had actually paid the bills. Bhupen Dev Sharma, Dr Manik Dutta, Bharat Das, HM Bardoloi and Kripal Das are facing a similar situation. Dr Manik Dutta has been asked to pay an arrear of Rs 17,000 accumulated during 1997 and 2000, while Bhupen Dev Sharma has an “arrear” of Rs 4,148 during the same period.
Terming the whimsical style of functioning of the BSNL as “either absolutely stupid or downright wicked,” Prof Dutta said this is a stratagem adopted by the BSNL at regular intervals to meet its deficits caused by irrational moves, for example, the waiver on the rentals of Telecom employees effected by the erstwhile Telecom Minister Ram Vilas Paswan. Hinting at the involvement of a section of corrupt officials in the whole business, he demanded to know what was done to the revenue in the form of money paid by the telephone-users. “Obviously, a sinister nexus of corrupt officials is at work, because the money paid by us has been shown as not paid, something that needs to be looked at very seriously,” he added.
Prof Dutta said the very fact of serving years-old bills smacks of dishonesty on the BSNL’s part. “The normal procedure followed in respect of a defaulter is to give him a notice immediately and then disconnect the line if he fails to pay the amount within the stipulated time,” he said and asked why the BSNL had to wait for years to serve the arrear bills. When contacted, the General Manager, Kamrup Telecom District, MK Gogoi said that while sometimes errors could occur in bill computation, on many cases it had been seen that consumers avoid paying bills by greasing the palms of lower-rung employees of the BSNL. “By the time the matter is detected, it may take some time and hence the occasional delay in the serving of arrear bills,” he said. He also assured that genuine grievances of the customers in this regard would be properly taken care of. “Accumulated arrears from different quarters that now stands at a staggering Rs 40 crore have been a headache for the BSNL for quite some time,” he revealed.
The BSNL has often been associated with serious deficiencies like over-billing, inordinate delay in the repair of dead phones, late delivery of bills, etc. But compelling a customer to pay non-existing arrears is most flabbergasting, to say the least. Aggrieved people feel it is time the BSNL woke up from its slumber and mended its ways so that the common citizens did not have to suffer.