The government has appointed Robert Jerard Ravi as the new Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) effective July 15, denying extension to outgoing P K Purwar, who served as the CMD of BSNL and MTNL since July 2019.
Purwar, who took charge as CMD, BSNL, completes his tenure Sunday (July 14) in July, had applied for an extension.
“The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will officially confirm the appointment of Robert J Ravi as the new CMD of BSNL in sometime. There is no decision to extend the tenure of the present CMD,” sources at the government told businessline.
This will be Ravi’s second stint at BSNL. Earlier, he had served as Additional General Manager at the State-run firm for about six years.
An Indian Telecom Service officer, Ravi, has 34 years of experience in the telecom sector. Currently, he is serving as Deputy Director General at DoT and before that he was serving as the Advisor (Consumer Affairs and Qualoty of Services) at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
He was involved in laying down the standards of quality of services to be provided by the service providers. His division was also responsible for laying for the regulated growth of Value-added service.
Ravi is a Gold Medalist in Engineering from the Pondicherry University, and MBA in International Business.
His role in BSNL will be crucial as the debt laden company is going through transition into 4G and 5G in future. Also, MTNL that was supposed to get merged into BSNL is now being looked onto.
According to sources in the government, the option of handing over debt-laden MTNL’s operations to BSNL through an agreement is being looked into. Given MTNL’s high debt, a merger with BSNL was not a favourable option, they added.
As of October-December 2023 quarter, BSNL’s consolidated net loss had risen to Rs.1,569 crore from Rs.1,481 crore in the preceding quarter. The higher sequential loss was largely attributed to increase in salary bills, depreciation and amortisation expenses, licence and spectrum fee, loss allowance of disputed bills, bad debt write-off, and expenses on construction contracts