HP villagers surrender defunct BSNL phones

Tired of their defunct phones hundreds of villagers, in one of the remotest mountainous regions of Himachal Pradesh, have surrendered their Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) land phones.

The affected inhabitants hail from ten villages which fall in Transgiri area of Sirmaur district. In the near absence of roads in this hard terrain, telephones are the only means of communications with the outside world here.

Almost every household has a phone except that it doesn't work for months.

"We took up the issue of poor BSNL service with the company several times and even staged protests outside their office but nothing was done. Therefore, we decided to hand over the dead phones back to them," said Sher Singh a local activist who took up the cause with BSNL.

BSNL officials have been trying to cover up by saying that the lines could not be repaired due to shortage of field staff.

"As BSNL mobile phones do not work in the absence of towers here, private operators like Airtel and Reliance have entered this remote region and have installed towers and are already distributing mobile connections to customers here," said Singh.