BharatNet Made 2.19 Lakh Gram Panchayats Service Ready, but India's Auditor Found Only 33.2 Per Cent of Them Operational in November 2025

BharatNet reaches a village by running optical fibre from the block office, the administrative centre for a cluster of villages, to the gram panchayat office, the village council’s building. There a box called an optical network terminal (ONT) turns the light travelling in the fibre into an ordinary internet connection. The last stretch, from that box to a public Wi-Fi point or a family’s home, is separate work done by other agencies.

India’s national auditor and a parliamentary committee have each counted how much of this network works, and both put the working network well below the number of panchayats declared service ready. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reported that 2.19 lakh panchayats were service ready in November 2025 but that only 33.20 per cent of them were operational. A Lok Sabha committee, using Department of Telecommunications (DoT) data, found working points of presence in 78,899 panchayats on 28 February 2026, out of about 2.64 lakh.

From the block office to the panchayat box

At the block office, equipment called an optical line terminal (OLT) sends and receives the light signals for every panchayat on its fibre. A case study from Tejas Networks, a supplier to the project, says the OLT at the block office connects over fibre to ONTs at the gram panchayats.

The Gujarat government’s project page lists what that looks like on the ground: an OLT, rack-mounted splitters (devices that share one fibre among several connections), and at each panchayat an ONT and a network switch, all on a technology called GPON, with 100 Mbps specified per panchayat. For Phase II, the Digital Bharat Nidhi (DBN), the fund that replaced the Universal Service Obligation Fund, says wired panchayats get up to 1 Gbps. The project is run by Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), a government company set up in 2012. Where fibre was not laid, Phase II used radio and satellite links.

The 2023 programme changes the layout. The DBN says the earlier linear network is being converted to a ring with routers at blocks and panchayats, so that traffic can take another path if one section fails.

The last mile belongs to someone else

Under Phase II the government gave CSC e-Governance Services India Limited, the company behind the Common Services Centres, the job of providing Wi-Fi access points and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections at panchayats. The PIB says 1,04,574 Wi-Fi access points and 11,41,825 FTTH connections had been installed by September 2024.

The ICRIER policy brief of October 2024 adds a measure of use. Wi-Fi hotspots existed in about 48 per cent of service-ready panchayats in August 2024, and only about 6 per cent of those were active.

Under the 2023 programme the home link goes to a BharatNet Udyami, which the DBN defines as a local champion such as a village entrepreneur, an internet service provider or a self-help group. The Udyami builds and maintains the village-to-home line and receives a one-time incentive for each new home fibre connection. The programme sets a minimum download speed of 25 Mbps for each FTTH subscriber, the DBN says. Separately, the PIB said in December 2024 that, as of October 2024, 6,15,836 of 6,44,131 villages had 4G mobile coverage. Tuput’s pieces on UPI, Aadhaar and India’s digital systems abroad cover what the government has built for connected users.

From a 2014 deadline to a 2023 rebuild

The Cabinet approved the National Optical Fibre Network on 25 October 2011, and the DBN’s project page says it was later renamed BharatNet. ICRIER describes the original aim as on-demand broadband of at least 100 Mbps to 2.5 lakh panchayats within two years, by 2014. The initial targets were met only in 2017.

Phase I connected block offices to panchayats using existing fibre of BSNL, RailTel and Power Grid, and the DBN says it finished in December 2017 in over 1 lakh panchayats. A modified strategy approved on 19 July 2017 brought in radio and satellite for Phase II, delivered through state-led, private-led and central-public-sector-led models. BSNL is the public-sector company in the third.

Phase II then slipped. ICRIER reports that the target of reaching the remaining 1.25 lakh panchayats by March 2019 was missed, that about 14 per cent of target panchayats were connected and 4 per cent service ready by the end of 2019, and that deadlines were pushed to August 2021 and then August 2023. Cabinet approved Rs 42,068 crore for Phases I and II, and the PIB says Rs 39,825 crore had been disbursed by 31 December 2023.

The Rs 1,39,579 crore rebuild

The Union Cabinet approved the Amended BharatNet Programme (ABP) on 4 August 2023, according to the DBN. The PIB gives its cost as Rs 1,39,579 crore (about Rs 1.4 trillion). It provides for fibre in a ring to about 2.64 lakh panchayats, fibre to about 3.8 lakh other villages on demand, and 1.5 crore home fibre connections over five years. BSNL is the single project management agency, and BBNL has been merged into it, the DBN says.

In a reply laid before the Lok Sabha on 5 August 2026, Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia gave these figures as on 30 June 2026: 43,908 km of fibre laid and 13,494 panchayats upgraded under the programme, and 9,75,402 active fibre-based connections using BharatNet across the country. That is about 5 per cent of the 2.64 lakh target (our division).

BSNL speakers at an industry conference, reported by tele.net on 3 August 2026, described the programme as roughly a fifth complete after its first year, with 18 BSNL-led packages across 21 states and 5 union territories and seven states running their own. The contracts run for 10 years and include operation and maintenance.

What the auditor counted

The CAG tabled its performance audit of BharatNet, Report No. 19 of 2026, in Parliament on 12 August 2026. The report’s own page was unreachable when this article was prepared, so the figures below are as reported by PTI, tele.net and The Policy Edge, with status as of November 2025.

• 2.19 lakh panchayats (96.70 per cent) were service ready against a revised scope of 2.26 lakh.
• 33.20 per cent of service-ready panchayats were operational. Only Gujarat and Punjab had more than 90 per cent operational.
• Fibre cuts accounted for about 48 per cent of non-operational cases, and the mean time to restore a fault was 17 days.
• Phase II was planned in 20 states (21 circles) and implemented in 13 states (14 circles). Six states reached full service-ready status after delays of two to six years.
• Spending was Rs 39,888 crore against the approved Rs 42,068 crore, and BSNL diverted Rs 2,001.43 crore of project money, since recouped.

The Policy Edge reports the CAG’s split by model: 90.11 per cent of panchayats operational under the private-led model, 39.80 per cent under the state-led model and 10.74 per cent under the central-public-sector-led model. It reports bandwidth utilisation of 17.91 per cent. PTI quotes the audit’s conclusion that BharatNet “has fallen short of its broader objective of bridging the digital divide.”

What the committee counted

The Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology presented its 32nd Report to the Lok Sabha on 6 August 2026. Its press release says the number of operational panchayats “has remained below the envisaged universal coverage” and the pace is uneven across states and models. It asks the DoT for a “comprehensive, model-wise and State-wise performance audit.”

tele.net reports that the committee found utilisation below the network’s potential. The figures behind that, which ThePrint and tele.net attribute to DoT data as of 28 February 2026, are:

• working points of presence in 78,899 of about 2.64 lakh panchayats;
• 40,610 of 1,20,208 Phase I panchayats operational;
• 2,918 operational against 24,229 planned in Phase II’s central-public-sector-led model;
• 7.19 lakh km of fibre laid, Rs 40,635 crore disbursed from the DBN, and 9,48,237 active FTTH connections against the 1.5 crore target.

Why the counts do not match

The counts measure different things, and the sources do not always say which.

• Panchayats: the PIB gave 2,18,347 service ready on 19 March 2025, the CAG 2.19 lakh in November 2025, and BSNL speakers about 214,000 of 265,000 covered. The CAG’s 33.20 per cent of 2.19 lakh is about 72,700 operational (our arithmetic), in the same range as the committee’s 78,899 three months later, though the sources do not say the two measures are the same.
• Fibre laid: the PIB gave 6,92,676 km as of 13 January 2025, the DoT told the committee 7.19 lakh km as of 28 February 2026, and the BSNL speakers’ phase totals of 3,11,241 and 3,74,260 route km sum to 6,85,501 (our sum).
• Home fibre connections: the PIB listed 12,21,014 commissioned in 2025, the DoT counted 9,48,237 active on 28 February 2026, the Lok Sabha reply 9,75,402 active on 30 June 2026, and BSNL speakers about 811,000 active.

What the 2023 programme builds in

The 2023 programme’s design includes a remote fibre monitoring system at each block, a central network operating centre, payment to implementing agencies under service-level agreements, and, per the DBN, 99 per cent uptime as the key target for operating about 2.64 lakh panchayats.

State-led rollouts are being signed one by one. Maharashtra’s agreement, reported on 5 October 2026, covers 28,237 panchayats and 15,799 villages, with Rs 10,520 crore of central support and more than nine lakh home fibre connections targeted. BSNL speakers said about 8,200 BharatNet Udyamis had been onboarded and that the network was adding a net 18,000 to 20,000 FTTH connections a month.