CITU Central Committee’s encouraging post on BSNL employees’ and pensioners’ dharna at New Delhi today 7-8-2026

Rain Can’t Wash Away Our Resolve – BSNL Workers Stand Firm!

Thunder rolled. Rain lashed down. And still, workers under the banner of the BSNL Co-ordination Committee- BSNLEU, AIBDPA, and BSNL CCWF- held their ground on dharna, refusing to let the skies do what the government has failed to do for nine years: break their resolve.

Comrade Sudip Dutta, National President of CITU, stood in solidarity with these fighting employees on behalf of the organisation- a reminder that this is not BSNL’s fight alone- it is the fight of the entire working class!

For close to a decade, BSNL workers have been denied what is rightfully theirs. Wage revision due since 2017- buried under an “affordability clause” that punishes workers for losses caused by the government’s own decisions: the years of denied 4G spectrum, the restrictions on equipment procurement, the capital support that came too late and too little. Pension revision, also due since 2017, remains unsettled even as courts have vindicated workers on connected issues. TSMs and casual workers- some with 20 to 25 years of service-are still paid on outdated 6th Pay Commission rates, denied minimum wages, denied PF and ESI, denied dignity.

And now, “restructuring.” VRS after VRS has already halved BSNL’s workforce since 2019. A new pilot project threatens to hollow out services further- not to save BSNL, but to prepare the ground for its eventual disinvestment.

Let’s be clear: BSNL did not lose to the market. BSNL was made to lose- by policy, by design, by a state that poured lakhs of crores into managing decline while calling it revival. The affordability clause is not a law of nature. It is a choice. And choices can be reversed- if workers force the issue.

Today, in the rain, BSNL workers showed exactly the kind of resolve this fight demands. No storm-natural or political- will wash away their demand for justice.

We say it plainly: Protect BSNL. Settle wages. Settle pensions. End the retrenchment of contract workers. Stop the restructuring that serves privatisation, not the public.