The employees unions of state-run BSNL have asked the government to refund over Rs 8,300 crore paid by the PSU for acquiring non-standardised Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum.

"The Joint Action Committee (of BSNL unions) demand that the non-standard BWA spectrum charges amounting Rs 8,313 crore should be refunded to BSNL by the Government," the JAC said in a letter to BSNL's Director (Human Resource).

Last year, during the BWA auction BSNL had paid over Rs 8,000 crore to the Government as spectrum charges like other service providers and was allotted non standardised band of BWA, it said.

According to sources, the BSNL management has written a letter to the Telecom Ministry in this regard.

BSNL has been facing severe financial pressure as its losses have more than tripled to about Rs 6,000 crore during 2010-11 mainly due to hefty outgo for employees' salary and expenses borne by the PSU for procuring 3G and BWA spectrum.

The company had registered a net loss of Rs 1,823 crore during 2009-10. BSNL had reported the highest net profit of over Rs 10,000 crore in 2005-06 but since then its profits have been falling and in 2009-10 it reported net losses.

The employees' unions also also raised concern over the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) being proposed by several experts.

However, JAC leaders said that VRS would not be helpful to the company as well as the employees and demanded that the proposal should be dropped, the letter added.

The VRS has been under discussion since 2009 when a panel headed by Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, advocated that BSNL take the VRS route to prune its nearly 2.77 lakh strong workforce by a third.

BSNL's liability for the proposed VRS is pegged at a modest Rs 2,700 crore, while the telecom department will shoulder nearly Rs 18,000 crore.

The Department of Telecom is already examining the feasibility of merging government telecom companies ITI and MTNL with state-run BSNL, in line with the recommendations of the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises (BRPSE).

BSNL, which offers telecom services in all areas of the country, barring Delhi and Mumbai, had 95.14 million mobile subscribers as of July 31. it is making efforts to catch up with its private counterparts.