Wednesday, December 21 2005 20:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Nearly 2,000 BSNL employees today (Dec 21, 2005) staged dharna in front of their offices in the city and elsewhere in West Bengal as part of a nationwide call for preparing for the all-India strike on January five to protest the National Telecom Policy, 2005.

The call for the dharna, given by the Joint Forum of Associations and Unions of Executives and non-Executives in BSNL, did not affect normal telecom services, a BSNL official said.

A Forum spokesman told sources that the agitation was against the Centre's decision to hike FDI ceiling in Telecom from 49 per cent to 74 per cent, the move to disinvest profit-making non-Navratna PSUs, including BSNL, besides permission to the private sector to offer internet telephony and other 'facilities' at the cost of BSNL.

Such decisions, when implemented, would cost BSNL nearly Rs 5,000 crore, he claimed and said that recent developments in the Telecom sector would adversely affect both BSNL and MTNL as well as its four lakh executives and non-executives.