Citing recommendations from a group led by Sam Pitroda, an advisor to PM, Bharat Sanchar Nigram Ltd should retire or shift 100,000 workers and also mull over disinvesting a 30% equity stake.

The committee said, "BSNL needs to improve organisation performance and employee productivity substantially. Retire or transfer around 100,000 employees through best possible processes such as voluntary retirement scheme (VRS)."

The state run telecom company has more than three lakh employees and is one of the biggest employers in India together with the Railway department.

This makes the employee base of BSNL ten times over the private operators. For instance, Bharti Airtel, which has more than 122 million subscribers all over India, has just about 25,000 workers to run its operations.

In the mobile sector, Bharti has 10,500 clients per worker.

In contrast, BSNL has 65 million wireless subscribers and 27.9 million fixed-line users for which it has three lakh staff. The figure makes its customer-to-employee ratio 350.

According to the news article, the Pitroda team has suggested that the administration should disinvest 30% equity in BSNL to an Indian strategic investor or via IPO and a bigger portion of the income from the equity sale should be used for employee VRS, growth and functioning.