The ministry of telecommunications today asked Bharat Sanchar Nigam to set up 500 new base stations. These base stations are to be set up at areas like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand which have districts like Dantewada, Dhanbad and Singhbum. The areas covered under this are some of the badly affected areas by the naxal.

A total of 31 districts shall be covered under this plan as these are the areas that are the most backward areas in terms of telecom development. Like Chhattisgarh has a tele density of only 5 per cent which is very low as compared to other areas which have a tele density of as much as 56 per cent.

Currently these areas have around 1,500 mobile towers in 30 districts which cover almost 40 per cent of the geography. But with the addition of new towers this number will escalated to 500 towers covering a geographical area of
50 per cent.

However this number is quite meagre when compared to big metros like Delhi which has a more than 4,500 towers along with nine telecom operators.

This step is on the agenda of the UPA Government's inclusive growth plans as there is a direct connection with telecom infrastructure growth and growth in GDP.