Srinagar, Mar 30: Landlines and broadband facilities to almost all the residential houses of the VVIPs in the City including Governor NN Vohra, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Inspector General of Police, Shiv Murari Sahai, other senior officials and Cabinet Ministers are dead since last night following a major snap in the telecommunication cable near BSNL’s Sulemian Complex office during road digging.
 And the immediate chances of link resumption are bleak as the BSNL people said it would take atleast three days to restore the connections.

THE INCIDENT
 The BSNL officials said around 3000 landline connections, mostly to the VVIP areas including Gupkar, Church Lane, Raj Bhawan Cheshma Shahi and SKICC, were snapped during digging of the road for the proposed road widening in the area.
 “All the landline connections including those of honourable Chief Minister, Governor and IGP Kashmir have been snapped,” Sub Divisional Officer Phone Central, Ravinder Razdan told Greater Kashmir.
 He accused the Roads and Building (R&B) department of negligence in the work for not having taken the BSNL into confidence.
 “This is sheer negligence on their part and it’s because of their individual act, which had no nod from our side, that the entire cable network got damaged,” he added.
 Razdan accused the police of not filing their complaint against the R&B department, a charge denied by the men in Khaki. “We contacted the police but till now they haven’t taken any action,” the official said

THE LOSSES
 The official said the losses would amount Rs one million rupees. “The cable damages have been assumed to be around Rs four lakhs whereas the revenue generation from these areas was around Rs two lakhs per day. This means by the time we restore the system the damages would amount to atleast Rs one million,” he explained.

BSNL CONFIRMS
 Later in the evening an official handout from the BSNL said: “The strategically important underground telecom network was severely damaged on 29th  of March 2012 at 2100 Hrs due to callous digging by the  Contractor  of PWD  R&B  Div II  by using JCB  machines  on footpath  near  Dalgate opposite Suleiman  complex.”
 “The underground cables which were feeding the VVIPs on Gupkar Road were badly damaged resulting in snapping of both telecom and broadband services. 
 “This damage has interrupted the telecom services to 1200 prestigious subscribers of BSNL and this digging has taken place without informing BSNL. This has put BSNL to great loss   which is being worked out. The company has started the necessary restoration work and are working 24x7 and the damaged cable will be fully restored in atleast 3 days,” the handout added.

R&B SPEAKS
 The Chief Engineer, Roads and Building department, Mushtaq Ahmed said the matter had come to his notice. “But this (cable snapping) isn’t that big an issue as they (BSNL people) are trying to project it,” the Chief Engineer told Greater Kashmir.
 “I myself visited the spot and found that it accidentally happened during the ongoing road widening,” he added.

Lastupdate on : Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 IST