Government Suffers a Loss of Rs. 1,757 Crore as BSNL Failed to Charge Reliance Jio for Infrastructure Sharing: CAG

The government has suffered the loss of Rs 1,757.56 crore as BSNL failed to charge the Reliance Jio for using its infrastructure for 10 years, starting from May 2014, despite their agreement, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said on Tuesday.

CAG also stated that BSNL lost another Rs. 38.36 crore because it did not deduct the required licence fee from the payments made to Telecom Infrastructure Providers (TIPS), leading to an overpayment.

Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said that BSNL, as a state-owned telecom firm, did not impose its Master Service Agreement (MSA) with Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) and failed to charge for the extra technology used on its shared infrastructure. This led to a loss of Rs. 1,757.76 crore, along with penal interest, for the government between May 2014 and March 2024.

CAG has also specified that BSNL charged less than the requirement for sharing its infrastructure.

As the statement said, BSNL did not follow the terms and conditions of the agreement with Reliance Jio (RJIL) and was also not able to reply to the reason behind the charged money. This led to the loss of Rs. 1,757 Crore (including GST) to the government from infrastructure sharing charges.