- News>
- States
Heavy rush in Srinagar for cellphone forms
Srinagar, Aug 18: Braving scorching heat and long queues, people made a beeline to the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited office here as they tried to lay their hands on an application form to get a mobile telephone connection.
Srinagar, Aug 18: Braving scorching heat and long queues, people made a beeline to the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited office here as they tried to lay their hands on an application form to get a mobile telephone connection.
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... I did not want to be left out. So I arrived here at 5.00 am 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
But going by the mad rush, BSNL authorities would not be hard pressed to issue forms till last date on August 25.
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 tomorrow early, as they saw long queues of people standing with patience to get the form. Bureau Report
"It has been a long wait for the mobiles... I did not want to be left out. So I arrived here at 5.00 am 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
But going by the mad rush, BSNL authorities would not be hard pressed to issue forms till last date on August 25.
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 tomorrow early, as they saw long queues of people standing with patience to get the form. Bureau Report