Shillong, Sept 14: After a gap of eight years, the state government on Monday approved the amendment of a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for implementation of the BharatNet Project in Meghalaya.

The decision was made during a cabinet meeting chaired by the Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma.

“In order to enhance the implementation of this project, amendments were made and those were accordingly cleared in the cabinet,” Sangma told reporters after the meeting. He said this was after there were some changes that the DoT had asked the Meghalaya government to ensure speedy implementation of the Bharat Net project.

“I had a meeting on this about two-three weeks back and they (BBNL) have indicated that they will take between 18 months to 24 months to complete this and we are hopeful this project will be completed at the earliest,” he said.

On the reasons for the delay to complete the project, the Chief Minister said the overall performance and implementation has been very poor adding only 15 percent of the project was completed.

“So the project implementation was not up to the mark and that’s the reason why we are pushing and the concerned stakeholders have said that if these amendments are made then it will help the project move faster and that is why we are going ahead with this,” he said.

He informed that the matter was also flagged before the IT Ministers’ Conference held last year.

“During this meeting, we brought up this message and this issue of implementation of Bharat Net Project is very slow in our state. After that, finally the government has agreed to amend the MoU,” he added.

MoU amended to expedite project

The tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), Government of India, IT department, Government of Meghalaya and Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL) on October 14, 2013.

The project is about laying optical fibre lines throughout the state. The project is targeted to be completed within 18 to 24 months.