Member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and BJP supporter, industrialist Jay Prakash Aggarwal, was yesterday appointed as MTNL's non-official director. Aggarwal is known to be close to top RSS functionaries and BJP leaders at the Centre. For the last two years, it was at his farm house at Jhinjhauli in Haryana, that the party held training camps for its Members of Parliament.

Aggarwal's appointment, cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, was adopted at the Board meeting of the MTNL. Aggarwal owns the Rs 300-crore Surya group of companies including Surya Pipes, Surya Bulbs and tubes. He also runs the Surya Foundation, with its headquarters in Delhi,which is manned by several RSS functionaries, among others.

MTNL was declared a navratna at the time of its GDR in October, 1997, which is the time since when it has been awaiting appointment of new non-official members on its Board. The idea of including non-official appointees on navratna boards was to have experts in the field in which the PSU operated or financial experts who would help make the PSU more competitive.

Despite repeated attempts, Aggarwal was unavailable for comment. S Rajagopalan, Chairman and Managing Director of the MTNL, confirmed Aggarwal's appointment. He defended the Government's decision to appoint a director with no experience in the field of telecom, on the grounds that he would provide the consumer interest angle to issues relating to telephone services.

Other MTNL insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity said there were not too many perks to go with this job.