Heavy rush at BSNL office in Srinagar for mobile forms

Braving inclement weather and long queues, people made a beeline to the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited office in Srinagar as they tried to lay their hands on the application forms to get mobile telephone connections.

Many enthusiasts, who are eager to go hi-tech with mobile telephony, had arrived at the BSNL office five hours ahead of the scheduled opening of the counters.

"It has been a long wait for the mobiles (telephones)...I did not want to be left out. So I arrived here at 5 a.m. to be among the first few in the queue," said a beaming Fayaz Ahmad as he left the BSNL premises with the pink-and-white form in his hand.

He said the five-hour wait was nothing compared to what he had endured in the run up to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's announcement in his Independence Day speech to launch mobile telephony in Jammu and Kashmir from this week.

Abdul Rashid, a businessman, said getting a mobile form was nothing short of an achievement in view of the huge demand for the service.

"I had to wait for four-and-a-half hours before I got this form and for me it is an achievement. I believe there are only few thousand connections to be given and you can see the serpentine queues, which will outnumber the available connections," Rashid said.

Teenagers and young men formed the bulk of the people in the wait for the application forms but there were some women too waiting for their turn.

Slogans of different kind -- apolitical in nature -- were raised by the youth in a jovial mood as they crawled in the queue towards the counter.

"Hum kya chahte, mobile (we want mobile)" was the general slogan as the youth laughed to beat off the scorching heat and keep flaring temperaments in control.

Discipline was self-regulated by the people but there were occasional arguments as some desperados tried to jump the queue.

The women folk, though just few dozen in number, were much more disciplined as they lined up outside the special counter set up for them.

Initially, BSNL is going to issue connections only to the residents of Jammu and Srinagar cities with each city getting 13,000 connections.

If for the people queuing outside the BSNL office it was a day of tremendous hardships, CRPF personnel, deployed there, and the traffic cops in the area had a tough time too.

The heavy rush of people to the BSNL office located in the heart of the city led to frequent traffic jams forcing the authorities to divert traffic, while the CRPF personnel occasionally had to browbeat the errant people trying to jump the queues.

Many a people left disappointed, hoping to come back early on Tuesday, as they saw long queues of people standing with patience to get the form.

"Today, it is impossible to get the form. If I stand in the queue, still it would be difficult for me to reach the counter within the stipulated time," said Rouf, leaving at around 1 pm, two-and-a-half hours before the closure of the counters.

Sensing that they wont get to the counter today, people at the tail of the long queues demanded opening of more counters and issuance of more connections.