Man fasts and sleeps outside bsnl office to

get phone fixed

Jul 06, 2014 |

Tired of the BSNL officials dilly-dallying ways to his requests for over 20 days to get
his defunct landline telephone rectified, a senior citizen in Bihar adopted a unique method
of agitation as a last-ditch effort for relief and succeeded, earning both awe-mixed praise
and utter dismay.
Armed with a pillow and bedclothes, Anirudh Pandey, 70, lay down quietly in a fastunto-death right in front of the door of the BSNL SDOs office in Patnas Pataliputra area
and left only when the officials told him that his phone had resumed working. His fastunto-death just to get his phone resume working caused quite a flutter among BSNLs
Patna circle officials, making them ask their juniors to be more mindful about consumers
complaints.
Uday Shankar Prasad, the SDO, was embarrassed and shocked to see Mr Pandeys act.
On being asked the reason, Mr Pandeys polite but strong-voiced reply was: I am a
BSNL telephone consumer, and I am on a fast-unto-death to get my defunct landline
phone working again.
BSNL officials were also worried because Pandey said he would end his agitation only
when his phone resumed working or when Union telecommunications minister Ravi
Shankar Prasad came there to provide him a solution to his problem.
I may die here but I will not leave unless my telephone line resumes working, said
Pandey to BSNL officials.
So BSNL technicians jumped to action. Half a dozen men were deployed to find the
fault in his telephone line and the job was accorded top priority. He was happy only when
a call was made to his phone and it rang. We offered him a tumbler of fruit juice to end
his agitation, said a BSNL official talking of Pandeys agitation on Wednesday.
Pandey, a retired official of the RBI and Patna resident, is so thoroughly accustomed to
the landline phone in his home that today, despite the proliferation of wireless
communication devices, he feels incomplete without using his landline phone.
The BSNLs landline service remains relevant even today. It is especially useful for
people in advanced ages. Its sound quality is always clear and it enriches the sense of
home, he said.