This is a story of a flawed business strategy being pursued by one of the most powerful, and allegedly a not-so-clean, CMD of a mega public sector entity. He has incurred the wrath of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), reportedly got rid of his Secretary, allegedly caused a huge loss to the exchequer, and possibly crafted tenders to favour select foreign suppliers. Yet his juggernaut moves on. Despite several charges, Anupam Shrivastava continues, and thrives, as the head of the state-owned telecom major, BSNL. The reason: the blessings of a brother of his former boss, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the former telecom minister, and a powerful lobby within the PMO. In the recent past, Shrivastava allegedly caused a `1,000-crore loss to the exchequer as he released unauthorised payment to a subsidiary of a Chinese firm. He issued advance purchase orders to Finnish Nokia and Chinese ZTE to supply network equipment for the firm’s `6,000 crore national mobile network expansion.
