Telecom minister A. Raja has taken away telecom subjects from minister of state (MoS) Gurudas Kamat and given them to other MoS Sachin Pilot.
There is speculation that Mr Raja took this step as the two differed on the functioning of some of the telecom PSUs. “No issue. Mr Raja has the prerogative,” said Mr Kamat.
However, telecom ministry officials claimed that there were no differences between Mr Raja and Mr Kamat. “Both Mr Kamat and Mr Pilot were looking at different aspects of telecom and posts. Mr Raja has only rationalised it by giving all functions of posts to Mr Kamat and all telecom functions to Mr Pilot. This will help the two to better concentrate on their portfolios and avoid confusion,” said a senior telecom ministry official.
Mr Kamat was also looking at the mobile number portability (MNP) and mobile virtual network operator, besides some PSUs functioning. Mr Pilot will now not look after any functions of posts, said sources. Meanwhile, Mr Pilot on Friday held a meeting of BSNL officials from Rajasthan, Bihar, Maharashtra, Kerala, and North-East to improve the services of the PSU. He said that the performance of BSNL services would be measured not only against the benchmarks prescribed by the Trai, but also against the best performance of any telecom operator in these circles.