Times
of India: Nagpur: Sunday, 14 February 2016.
Finally,
streetlight poles will get rid of optical fibre cables as Reliance Jio Infocomm
Limited (RJIL) has started removing them after NMC turned down its application
to extend the permission. The telecom company has been laying 4G network across
the city and had obtained permission to lay aerial cables for one year.
TOI on
October 28 last year had highlighted that RJIL did not remove the cables from
poles even after its permission lapsed. Ruling party leader Dayashankar Tiwari,
leader of opposition Vikas Thakre and BJP corporator Pravin Bhisikar had raised
the issue in the NMC general body meeting held on January 19. Mayor Pravin
Datke had directed the administration to initiate necessary action.
The NMC
electrical department was in likely to give an extension, but rejected the
application after the general body's order. In general body meeting held on
February 12, municipal commissioner Shravan Hardikar had assured the House to
get the cables removed within a week.
Reliance Jio
spokesperson told TOI, "We had laid aerial network earlier with due
permission from NMC for a specified period. Since the work was pending, we had
sought an extension hoping to get a positive response. Since the permission was
not extended, we have initiated the process to remove the aerial cables in a
phased manner to avoid traffic disruption and inconvenience to public. Since it
is a huge network, it will take some time to remove the cables," he said.
As per RTI
information, the electrical department had given permission to lay cables with
a length of 144km on 4,800 street lights on December 11, 2014 for a period of
one year. The department was supposed to ensure removal of cables after one
year, but it sat pretty citing the application for an extension. Some poles
came down, while a few tilted due to the load.
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