CHENNAI: The whistleblower, who exposed the secret telephone exchange set up by former Union telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran at his Boat Club residence in Chennai, was a BSNL subdivisional engineer, whose pension has now been stopped on disciplinary grounds.

CK Mathivanan carried out a campaign within BSNL against Maran for three years for alleged misuse of infrastructure to facilitate free transmission of data and visuals for a television channel owned by Dayanidhi’s elder brother Kalanithi Maran .

After retiring in June 2013, Mathivanan found that he was among the staffers who were penalized for an agitation against superiors, including those under whose names Maran was allotted 323 ISDN lines. Mathivanan is yet to receive his pension, but the fact that his actions helped expose a Rs 440-crore revenue loss to the PSU is a matter of his satisfaction.

'Feud in DMK exposed scam'

Today, the National Federation for Telecom Employees deputy general secretary says he was relieved when he heard the news that the CBI had filed an FIR in the case. His modesty does not permit him to take credit for it, though. “In fact, it was not I who exposed the scam. It got exposed because of the feud in the DMK,” he told TOI.

According to him, Maran’s exchange was secretly set up by the BSNL Chennai circle office in 2007. “I happened to see a file in which then general manager (operations) G Selvam had written that other than himself, chief general manager (CGM) and deputy general manager (operations), no one else should come to know about the 323 lines being provided at Maran’s house. It was a state-of-the-art exchange, which was connected by just one pair of optical fibre cables. It could carry huge amount of data and visuals at very high speed,” said Mathivanan.

After a preliminary probe, a CBI team had filed a report recommending action against Maran and senior BSNL officials. But the departmental nod remained elusive. The issue came back into focus after a PIL was filed in Supreme Court in 2012 seeking action against the former Union minister.

Trouble had started for the trade unionist in September 2011, when he, along with 100 colleagues, protested against former BSNL CGM MP Velusamy (in whose name the 323 lines were allotted) visiting BSNL Chennai circle headquarters after his retirement.

“We had information that he had visited CGM’s office several times to destroy files pertaining to the secret exchange. The new CGM, A Subramaniam, acted with a vengeance against us. Seventy-eight people faced a break in their service. I was given the maximum penalty, which would have led to my dismissal or compulsory retirement. The next CGM allowed me to retire, but recommended a cut in my pension. BSNL CMD, however, did not accept the recommendation. The CMD referred the case back to the CGM for review and it is pending there,” said Mathivanan.

His prayer to the CBI is that it should expand the scope of its investigation to find out whether such secret exchanges were set up in other parts of the country as well. “What BSNL has lost is huge money. It (Rs 440 crore) is adequate to pay minimum bonus to 2.89 lakh employees of BSNL for four years in a row. It should be recovered from Maran,” Mathivanan said.

