#Coronavirus: Govt Will Give Rs 10 Talktime To Every BSNL User; They Don’t Need To Recharge Till April 20th

It seems like the public sector telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nagar Limited (BSNL) is in the highlights again, this time however for a totally different reason.

Why are we mentioning a preface for the public sector telco is because of all of our stories which we’ve covered regarding the latter’s immense activities in the past year and this. There were constant reports of BSNL not paying its employees on time.

And then BSNL rolled out its Voluntary Retirement Scheme, 2019 on November 4 in an attempt to save about ?7,000 crore annually.

BSNL Takes a Giant Leap for Individuals Affected by the Pandemic Situation

In an appreciable step taken by the public sector telecom company, BSNL has now removed the need for mandatory recharge from its prepaid users until at least April 20.

It has taken this step in order for the central government to help out millions of individuals, particularly those belonging to a financially lower stratum of the society. 

The move aims to particularly help out members of the working class community of India who primarily earn on a daily wage basis. Due to this pandemic the economy has crumbled, leading these daily-wage earners without income avenues for the foreseeable future.

This announcement was made yesterday, March 30, by the union telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Incentive of Rs 10 to be rolled out by BSNL

Not just did BSNL waiver off the mandatory recharges until at least April 20, as per Prasad, an incentive of Rs 10 will also be rolled out automatically to users of BSNL prepaid connections, so as to aid them in making outgoing calls.

The state-run BSNL’s prepaid connection is actively used by millions of users across India, especially among the low data usage segment of Indian consumers.

With BSNL’s aid being brought forth by the government in these times of crisis, it remains to be seen if private players such as Vodafone-Idea and Bharti Airtel also attempt to adopt similar steps. 

Since the advent of Reliance Jio, those who have moved on to using smartphones from feature phones have migrated to the latter, sparking off a mass transition to a digital services ecosystem in India.

India presently faces an unprecedented situation, with the majority section of the country now in lockdown in a bid to prevent the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus from spreading into the community, therefore creating what may become India’s largest healthcare crisis in recent history.