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Communication during election season at the mercy of God

DJ Venkatesh
Diglipur, Mar 06: Poor broadband and landline connectivity of BSNL has virtually disconnected Diglipur Island with rest of the world. Due to this poor connectivity, offices like Banks, Post Office, Shipping Ticketing Counter, Railways Ticketing Counter are facing lots of difficulties at Diglipur Sub-Division.
Making things worse the SDO and the Telephone Technicians have also gone on leave.
Worst hit are those who are solely dependent of internet for their daily income. Not only this, during elections the Assistant Commissioner’s office of Diglipur is also finding it difficult to send important information to the Chief Election Officer, A & N Administration.
“Most of the time, the telephone services of BSNL remains disrupted and it is not possible even to communicate urgent messages related to Election to the Head Quarters over telephone. The Internet services are also very poor usually it gives a speed of 5-7 kbps when working and at least 2-3 days in a week the services are not available in this sub-division for which several correspondence have been done with BSNL though the services remains unimproved,” the Assistant Commissioner wrote in a letter addressed to the Chief Election Officer of A & N Administration on 5th March 2014.
The Assistant Commissioner added that in this situation it is very much difficult to communicate with the BLOs and other officials deployed for election purposes and also it is not possible to communicate with Port Blair Election Office, every day many data regarding elections has to be downloaded from internet but due to very much disrupted services of BSNL all the things are not possible.
“Considering all the above conditions along with the reality that more than 300 Km OFC through forest area and some places through underwater, it is not possible to maintain the services of BSNL properly throughout the year. So it is requested that a V-Set may be given to this establishment so that at least important information could be conveyed and downloaded,” the Assistant Commissioner mentioned in his letter.
The internet services as well as telephone connectivity of BSNL was out of order since 15 days in Diglipur region last month. It was then informed by BSNL that the OFC was broken under seawater from somewhere near Baratang and it will take near about 3-4 days to restore. But after two long weeks only the internet services of BSNL was restored that too only for a few hours and again it started giving nightmares to public.
“This time the SDO Diglipur is informing that now the OFC is broken over land at somewhere near Baratang so internet services will not be available for some more days,” the Assistant Commissioner added.