Union Minister for Communications & IT, Law & Justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the moral of the department was not in happy situation because of this being in news for wrong reasons in the past. It was clearly conveyed by Prasad that now decision will be taken on merits and days of lobbying are over.

Prasad appealed to all officers to open up and learn to take decisions to ensure growth in the most important sector of Indian economy. He emphasized that improvement of BSNL and MTNL both in terms of performance and infrastructure would be an important area of this priority.

He would be playing a pro-active role in monitoring functioning of the two bodies. For this he has directed for installation of suitable equipments in his chamber. If the Base Transmission Station in a particular circle are not functioning in a satisfactory manner then serious view will be taken.

He further stated that around 2,50,000 village panchayats in the country would be provided broadband connectivity within a period of three years.

Interacting with the media in Sanchar Bhawan in the Capital on Tuesday, the Minister said that there was a target of covering at least 50,000 gram panchayats within this financial year and 1,00,000 village panchayats each in the years 2015-16 and 2016-17. He said that improvement of performance of BSNL and MTNL was a key area of concern for his Ministry and his objective was to improve the services of these organizations for better consumer satisfaction.

Shares of MTNL gained Rs 2.55, or 8.72%, to settle at Rs 31.80. The total volume of shares traded was 2,500,897 at the BSE (Tuesday).