Govt slams Airtel for ‘poor’ infra in extremist regions

NEW DELHI: The government has come down heavily on Bharti Airtel for the company’s “abysmal performance” in installing telecom network and infrastructure projects, involving aspirational districts and those in the left-wing extremist (LWE) areas.

It has written a letter to company CEO Gopal Vittal on the matter, highlighting the “extremely poor” progress in executing the critical projects. The projects, running into several hundred crores of rupees, have been found to be going very slow, leading to a rebuke from the department of telecom (DoT) that commissions and funds them through the Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF), which is a digital outreach programme of government, official sources said.