Port Blair, July1: The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has once again let down the aspirations of the remote islanders of A&N Islands after it decided to delay the launch of the Submarine Optical Fibre Cable project (CANI) on 1st of July 2020. There has been much hue and cry over operationalizing the CANI Project, especially in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced the students to opt for online classes.

The BSNL, A&N Islands had announced that the CANI project would be commencing from today, which came as a sigh of relief to the islanders, who have been deprived of the basic facility such as proper communication, compared to their counterparts in the mainland India.

The authorities at BSNL A&N Islands have now placed the blame on the DOT, terming it as technical glitch, escaping questions posed and queries by its customers in the islands.

Customers in A&N Islands have been looted over the years with service rates much above what other states have been paying. Even the new circle rates of Broadband Plans, offered by the BSNL in A&N Islands has been fixed at a higher price. All protests from the customers, political leaders and social activists had fallen in deaf ears, forcing the islanders to agree to pay exorbitantly for better services, if that is the case. Unfortunately the aspirations of the islanders was again turned down brutally by the BSNL, terming it as technical glitch, thus making BSNL the biggest joke of the century in A&N Islands.

It can be expected that the shameless authorities in the BSNL who have been issuing contradictory statements over months in respect to CANI would try to understand what it takes being an islander (deprived of basic facilities in spite of paying higher costs).