Dayanidhi Maran, the Union minister for communications and information technology, is scheduled to meet Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd officials on Thursday to discuss options, including a merger of the two public sector undertakings.
According to BSNL officials, a merger with MTNL made sense since both the companies were run by Indian Telecom Services officers and also shared infrastructure. Further, a merger would give the new entity a pan-India footprint, they added.
Sources in the department of telecommunications, however, said that both the PSUs would present couple of options to Maran stating the case for and against the restructuring.
The DoT had earlier convened a meeting on May 18 on the issue of restructuring the two PSUs.
The meeting was chaired by DoT secretary and Telecom Commission chairman Nripendra Mishra and attended by K H Khan, member (technology), Jagmohan Mishra, member (production), BSNL chairman and managing director (CMD) VP Sinha, MTNL CMD R S P Sinha and Trai member D P S Seth, former DoT secretaries, S M Agarwal, H P Wagle and D K Sangal too attended the meeting.
