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BJP resolution against rise in basic phone charges

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 27. The Bharatiya Janata Party will strongly recommend to the Communications Minister, Arun Shourie, that proposals which will make the basic land telephones more expensive be kept in abeyance.

In an extraordinary move, the party adopted a resolution today at a meeting chaired by the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India should not increase the monthly rental charge for basic land-line telephones, that the pulse rate for calls from basic telephone should not be reduced from the present three minutes to the proposed two minutes, and finally, that no change should be made in the categorisation of any geographical area as urban or rural unless this is done on the basis of the census.The resolution is to be submitted to Mr. Shourie and the BJP certainly expects him to act on it. The party is worried that its ``major achievement'' in the field of communications which is a political asset could be degraded by an increase in the tariff structure of basic telephones even as mobile telephone tariffs are expected to fall dramatically. There is a view that this would be seen by the people as anti-poor and could be used against the BJP by its political opponents.

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