Department of Telecom has sought the Cabinet approval for non-Indian chief executive officers and chief financial officers in telcos, besides seeking to do away with the remote access ban and dual norms for those firms with and above 49 per cent of foreign direct investment.

DoT sent the final Cabinet note to various ministries on Monday. The telecom companies have to comply with the FDI guidelines by January 2.

The Cabinet is expected to approve the changes in the original guidelines of FDI in telecom (Press Note 5) before that.

In the note, it has said there is no need to insist on having Indian CEOs and CFOs at the telecom companies and nationality criteria to choose CEOs/CFOs would only look regressive when the country is encouraging FDI in the sector.

The note says, with the ministry of home's approval for such foreign nationals, they could be appointed in the Indian telecom companies. What it means is if the Cabinet approves the DoT's suggested view that it should not be made mandatory for telecom companies to have top management being run by only Indians, Tata Teleservices [Get Quote], which has a foreign CEO -- Darryl Green, will be the main beneficiary.

DoT's Cabinet note seeks to allow remote access to telecom companies with the caveat that there will be blanket approval for existing network operations/management centres (outside in India), while for new centres, the government approval would be needed.

Important voice and data traffic like that of key ministries and government would be in a secure network so that even if the remote access centre is outside, these official data would not be exposed to anybody.

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