The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has formulated the Indian Telegraph (Infrastructure Safety) Rules 2022. The Central government has envisioned fulfilling the communication needs of the citizens and enterprises through establishment of a resilient, secure, accessible and affordable Digital Communications Infrastructure and Services. The Press Information Bureau has publicised these Rules by its bulletin dated 6th January, 2023.
In order to address the issues of safety to the existing telecom infrastructure, the Government has formulated the Indian Telegraph (Infrastructure Safety) Rules, 2022 published in the Gazette of India on 3rd January, 2023.
The Salient features of these rules and App are:
- Any person wishes to exercise a legal right to dig or excavate any property which is likely to cause damage to a telegraph infrastructure shall give notice to the licensee, prior to commencement, through common portal.
- The information shall include the name and address of the person exercising the legal, agency details, contact details, date and time of start of the exercise, description and location of the exercise, and the reasons for such dealing.
- The licensee shall provide the details of telegraph infrastructure owned/ controlled/ managed by them, falling under/ over/ along the property with which the person intends to deal, alongwith precautionary measures for coordination in avoiding damages to the telegraph infrastructure.
- Excavators/utility asset owners will be given alerts via SMS, email and in-app notification and will also have the facility of ‘Click to call’ from the app itself.
- The person digging or excavating shall take appropriate action on precautionary measures provided by the licensee.
- In case no licensee provides details within the prescribed time, the person having legal right to dig or excavate shall be free to dig or excavate the property thereafter.
- Further, any person, who has dug/excavated any property causing damage to a telegraph infrastructure, shall be liable to pay the damage charges to the telegraph authority.The damage charges shall be computed based on such expenses as may be incurred in restoring damages.
- Once the asset owner agencies map their underlying assets with GIS coordinates on PM GatiShakti NMP platform, it will also be possible to know the presence of underlying utility assets, at the point of interest, before start of excavation.
