Centre will pay to set up mobile towers in Naxal areas

In a bid to fight Naxals, the government has decided to provide money to telecom operators to set up mobile towers in the worst naxal affected areas. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 25, 2011, 23:04:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a bid to fight Naxals, the government has decided to provide money to telecom operators to set up mobile towers in the worst naxal affected areas.

The money for setting up towers will be provided from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) to both public and private operators, to improve connectivity in the 60 worst Naxal affected areas.

The Naxals have destroyed close to 100 mobile towers in the last four years in a dozen Maoist infested districts, resulting in losses of crores to telecom companies. Attack on mobile towers is a recent phenomenon.

“As the telecom companies were not willing to pay the cost of setting up the towers, the government has decided to pay for it,” a senior government official said during an interaction with district magistrates of 60 worst Naxal affected areas this week.

“The telecom ministry is working with us for identifying the areas where mobile towers can be set up.”

While the public sector Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has its network in Naxal affected areas, private operators have been reluctant citing frequent bombing of mobile towers by Naxals.

Sudha Pillai, who heads the empowered group on modifying existing schemes for Naxal affected areas and is member Planning Commission, instructed the district magistrates to identify security establishments where mobile towers can be set up.

“Now the government has decided to set up mobile towers in police establishments and you (district magistrates) should help in improving mobile connectivity,” she said.

Under the plan, the government will provide full capital cost for setting up over 1,800 mobile towers in Naxal affected areas. A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting under telecom secretary R Chandrasekhar this month.

The money will be provided from the USO fund which is aimed at providing broadband network in far-flung areas of the country. Before the money is released each telecom operator will have to submit a detailed plan to the Central government.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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