Chennai's telegraphic machines to be silenced from July 15

Chennai:

India’s telegram service will soon be buried in the history and Chennai’s telegraph offices, which were functioning along with the customer service centers in different locations of the city would be silenced on July 15.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited spokeswoman Vijaya told Express that they have received a circular deciding to discontinue the 160-year-old telegraph service, which started in Madras in 1853 linking Ooty, Chennai and Bangalore.

“We will be closing down the telegram services in the 20 customer service centers by the middle of next month,” she said, adding that the employees will be redeployed in other departments of BSNL.

While the district telegraph offices in the city were moved and combined with customer service centres in a period of time, the seven ctos will be reduced to collecting bills and issuing recharge coupons. She said the Central Telegraph Office in Chennai is the highest collector of bills for BSNL.

“The decision was taken in New Delhi as it has become necessary with the need for telegram slowly getting extinct,” said the BSNL spokeswoman.

Interestingly, the decision to snap the telegram services did not go well with the union and the district secretary of BSNL Employees Union in Telegraph Sridhar Subramaniam said that would oppose the decision by BSNL management to discontinue the service.

“How could the management take a decision when the Indian Telegraph Act is passed by the parliament. The decision to discontinue the service has to be taken by the parliament and not the BSNL management. We will oppose this move,” he said.

He also said that even now all the telephone services come under the Indian Telegraph Act and it is the constitutional obligation of the government and others to decide it in parliament and close the service.

Another BSNL employee said that the service has to be closed as telegram services are available only in India while the rest of the world has discontinued it. But Subramaniam said a similar decision was taken to discontinue 197 and trunk call service. “We protested against it and the plan was shelved. The private operator who was provided the opportunity to run the services could not do so,” he added.

But then the telegram services had already become obsolete in an Internet age with the advent of smart phones, SMS, e-mail, social networking sites and chats replacing the one-way communication, says Vijaya.

Interestingly, the telegram is still recognized in India as a legal document in the court and is still being used as mass representations during an issue besides offices use it to build up a official record. Vijaya says that with the Internet boom, people have shifted to mobiles and networking sites rather than depending on the telegraph services. To a query on whether the rural India would be affected following the discontinuation of services, she said that many rural areas are dependent on PCOs and mobile services. “People prefer an instant reply, why would anyone prefer a one-way communication when you can get a response immediately,” she said.