Government is believed to have approved the long-pending appointment of Anupam Shrivastava as CMD of state-run telecom firm BSNL.
"Appointment of Anupam Shrivastava for the post of BSNL CMD has been approved by Appointments Committee of the Cabinet," a Telecom Ministry official told PTI.
A BSNL spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.
The Public Enterprise Selection Board had shortlisted Anupam Shrivastava for the post of Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL in 2013. At present, he is serving as Director - Consumer Mobility at the PSU.
Shrivastava's tenure as CMD was to begin May 1, 2013 but then telecom minister Kapil Sibal held back the recommendation and granted extension to RK Upadhyay till June 30.
Further, the change in government delayed the decision to appointment a head of the loss making telecom PSU.
At present, BSNL's Director Enterprises AN Rai is handling the additional charge of CMD.
Shrivastava as CMD BSNL will have uphill task to expedite roll out national optical fibre network, which is one of the major projects of NDA government.
BSNL is working to lay about 1.6 lakh kilometres of optical fibre cable (OFC) in 408 districts covering over 81,000 village panchayats under Phase 1 of the project roll out. As per sources, the PSU has finished only laying of only 6 per cent OFC by end of 2014.
Government has committed to cover 50,000 village panchayats by March 2015, another 1 lakh by March 2016 and rest of 1 lakh by December 2016 under NOFN project.
Besides, Shrivastava will have to work to make the PSU profitable which has been running in losses since 2009-10.
BSNL's profits started declining continuously from Rs. 10,183 crore in 2004-05 before recording a loss in 2009-10.
