Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Report No. 19 of 2026 of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India is a performance audit of BharatNet, the rural broadband project of the Department of Telecommunications. It covers 2017-18 to 2022-23 with a focus on Phase-II, and updates the position to November 2025. Its central finding is stated by the auditor in a single sentence: BharatNet “has achieved substantial infrastructural success” while falling short of its broader objective.
What was built
By November 2025, BharatNet had reached service-ready status in 2.19 lakh gram panchayats against a revised scope of 2.26 lakh — 96.70 per cent, made up of 99.97 per cent of the Phase-I target and 92.79 per cent of Phase-II. Expenditure to that date was ₹39,888 crore against an approved budget of ₹42,068 crore, which this desk computes at 94.8 per cent of the sanction. The project was conceived in October 2011 and executed through a special purpose vehicle, Bharat Broadband Network Limited, incorporated in 2012, and is funded from the Universal Service Obligation Fund, now the Digital Bharat Nidhi.
On any measure of civil and optical engineering across a country of India’s size, laying fibre to more than two lakh village councils is a substantial national achievement, and the audit says so before it says anything else.
CAG Report No. 19 of 2026 · position as at November 2025.
BharatNet, in the auditor’s own figures
| Parameter / Metric | Details |
|---|---|
| Approved budget | ₹42,068 cr |
| Phase-I / Phase-II | ₹11,148 cr / ₹30,920 cr |
| Expenditure incurred | ₹39,888 cr |
| Gram panchayats service-ready | 2.19 lakh of 2.26 lakh · 96.70% |
| Of those, operational | 33.20% |
| Available bandwidth utilised | 17.91% |
| Mean time to restore a fibre fault | 17 days |
| Fibre faults as share of non-operational cases | about 48% |
| Scope under the Amended BharatNet Programme | 6.4 lakh villages / GPs |
Where the audit says the gap opened
The distance between a network that exists and a network that works is the whole of this report. Of the gram panchayats declared service-ready, 33.20 per cent were operational in November 2025 — on this desk’s computation, of the order of 73,000 of the 2.19 lakh. Only 17.91 per cent of available bandwidth was in use. Fibre faults and cuts accounted for roughly 48 per cent of non-operational cases, and the mean time to restore a fibre fault stood at 17 days.
The auditor is careful to record where it works, and this is the part worth dwelling on. In Gujarat and Punjab, operational gram panchayats were above 90 per cent. The same technology, the same fund and the same design produce a working network in two States. Whatever explains that difference is the most valuable thing in the report, because it is a demonstration that the target is reachable rather than a theoretical objection.
On planning, the audit found that detailed project reports were prepared from desktop surveys although physical surveys were mandated, that Phase-II was implemented in 13 States and 14 circles against a plan for 20 States and 21 circles, and that six States and seven circles had reached full service-ready status, with delays of two to six years across all three implementation models. On finance, the milestone-based payment model was weakest under the central public sector undertaking-led model and strongest under the private-led model, which the report says showed better financial discipline and better service delivery. The audit also records that BSNL diverted ₹2,001.43 crore from the project for other purposes, and that the amount has since been recouped, with utilisation certificates now required under the Amended BharatNet Programme.
The department’s replies are on the record
This is not a report whose findings sit unanswered. The Ministry has replied throughout, and the replies are dated: December 2024 on the States where work could not be executed; March 2025 on GIS mapping for Phases I and II, on liquidated damages, on the technology choice, on the gap between fibre laid and fibre acceptance-tested, and on capitalisation; November 2025 on the ring-based architecture under the amended programme and on gram panchayat completion, where the Ministry stated that of 5,166 planned gram panchayats, 5,121 had been covered. In several places the Ministry accepted the audit contention and set out what was being done. Under Blitz practice a finding whose reply exists is never carried without the reply, and none is carried here without it.
In Gujarat and Punjab more than nine in ten connected panchayats are working. The same design, the same money. That gap is the report’s most useful finding.
What the auditor recommends
• Detailed project reports from ground surveys, not desktop surveys.
• A fast-track approval mechanism at DoT and the Digital Communication Commission.
• Complete GIS mapping of all gram panchayats.
• Roll out fibre fault localisation and remote monitoring, integrated with a central network operations centre.
• Performance-linked disbursement, on the private-led model.
• Acceptance testing before a milestone is declared achieved.
• Anchor tenancy by health, education and agriculture departments; tiered pricing for first-time users.
• Dedicated State maintenance teams under strict service level agreements.
The remedy already under way
The report itself notes that the decision to merge Bharat Broadband Network Limited into BSNL and run BharatNet under a single agency through the Amended BharatNet Programme “reflects an acknowledgement of the governance and execution deficiencies noted in the project”. That is an unusual sentence for an audit report, and a fair one: the corrective step was taken before the audit was tabled. The amended programme, approved by the Cabinet in August 2023, widens the scope from 2.5 lakh gram panchayats to 6.4 lakh villages and gram panchayats — about two and a half times — and it is into that programme that the auditor asks its recommendations to be carried.
Read together, the report is less an account of a failure than an account of a project that solved the harder half of its problem first. Digging trenches across two lakh village boundaries is difficult and was largely done. Keeping a fibre cut in a paddy field mended within a day, and persuading a district hospital and a school to actually buy bandwidth, is the unglamorous second half, and it is where the next five years of the programme will be decided.
Offered only as corrective advice, to help the work move faster: the single most useful publication the Department could make is the one the audit implicitly asks for — a State-wise monthly figure for operational gram panchayats and mean time to restore, published as the service-ready count already is. Gujarat and Punjab are above 90 per cent; putting every State’s number beside theirs, every month, would convert a finding into a scoreboard, and the anchor-tenancy recommendation on health, education and agriculture would then have something concrete to be measured against.
