The Department of Telecommunication and State-owned telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) incurred losses of over ₹1,700 crore after BSNL failed to bill Jio from May 2014 to March 2024, as per a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

“BSNL failed to enforce the Master Service Agreement (MSA) with M/s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) and did not bill it for the additional technology used on BSNL’s shared passive infrastructure, resulting in a loss of ₹1,757.76 crore and penal interest thereon, between May 2014 and  March 2024, to the Government exchequer,” said the report.

Notably, this year has been the first time since 2007 when BSNL reported a profit – ₹262 crore in the third quarter of the previous financial year.

Apart from the failure to procure the bills, the other “due diligence, non-billing, and deficient planning” by BSNL resulted in losses as listed below, as noted by CAG –

1. Poor planning and deviation from its own manual for buying equipment resulted  in BSNL buying large Polyethylene Insulated Jelly Filled (PIJF) underground cables that were not needed. Cables worth ₹80.64 crore were left unused.  
2. In 22 out of 28 regions, BSNL failed to deduct the required license fee from payments made to Telecom Infrastructure Providers (TIPs), as stated in their agreement. This mistake caused a loss of ₹38.36 crore from 2019 to 2022.  
3. BSNL also did not follow the terms of its agreement with Reliance Jio (RJIL). It failed to apply the price increase clause, leading to a revenue loss of ₹29 crore (including GST) from infrastructure-sharing charges.  
4. Additionally, BSNL did not check and process bills for duct hiring charges within the allowed time. Because of this, it lost ₹5.43 crore in GST Input Tax Credit.  
5. Start of work on the project before receipt of full payment in advance and failure in invoking a Dispute Resolution clause of the agreement by BSNL resulted in loss of ₹4.80 crore. The non-inclusion of liability clause led to potential loss of interest of ₹2.31 crore.

Both PSUs under the Department of Telecommunication – BSNL and Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) – incurred a total loss of ₹1,944.92 crore.