Village where BSNL phones do not ring

CHITKUL, HIMACHAL PRADESH: Telephones do not ring in this remote, picturesque village in Himachal Pradesh.

It's being one year since the villagers close to the China border in Kinnaur district picked up the handsets to say 'hello'.

This is because the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) cables were damaged, and they are yet to be replaced.

"For over a year, telephones in the entire village have not been working. Despite repeated requests, no BSNL official has turned up to repair the telephone lines," resident Shyam Singh Negi told IANS.

Chitkul, the last village connected by road in the area, has around 120 houses. The village, some 275 km from Shimla, has over 50 landline phone connections.

"Since the mobile phones rarely work here and the landline phones are not working for long, we remain cut off from the rest of the world most of the time," housewife Reeta Negi said.

"For making a call, we have to walk miles to get the mobile signal," she added.

BSNL divisional engineer R.S. Kashyap in Rekong Peo, the district headquarters, said the telephones of Chitkul had not worked since December 2010 owing to damage to the underground phone cables.

"During road widening the BSNL cables were badly damaged. Now, we are getting the new cables and these will be replaced on priority," Kashyap told IANS.

Chitkul, a picturesque spot with a backdrop of the snow-clad Kinner Kailash peaks, has a population of 650. It remains cut off from the rest of India for more than six months a year owing to heavy snowfall.

It is also the last point in India one can travel to without a permit.