Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on 21st July, 2020 has announced an extension for relaxation to the rules and regulations imposed with regards to work from home for service providers primarily including the IT sector till 31st December, 2020. This announcement has come in the wake non-stop rising cases of Covid-19 at an alarming rate. The situation in India seems to not yet be under control as the new cases of Covid-19 rise at a rate of nearly 40,000 per day. AT this rate crores of Indians will be affected by the virus and there will be massive shortage of beds in hospitals (which is almost happening even now) and there will be shortage of medicines and drugs to treat the ill and ailing which could lead deaths of several thousands. In order to prevent the virus from further spreading, DoT has come up with this announcement.
DoT’s new announcement will allow all the other service providers (OSP) especially the IT sector to work and continue functioning from home. This new announcement comes on the back of a prior announcement which was made in April, wherein DoT had announced relaxations such work from home to OSPs. This relaxation was meant to be until the month of May, and the employees were expected to return to office from June. Later DoT in a follow up announcement had extended this relaxation till 31st July, 2020. After careful consideration of the situation of the pandemic in India, DoT arrived at this decision of extending the relaxations till the New Year’s Eve.
Major IT companies have praised this decision and are in complete support of it. IT giants like Tata Consultancy, Wipro Ltd., Infosys Ltd., Nasscom to name a few have been the face of the work from home campaign as they have shifted their work base from office to homes. The trend of work from home has caught on in India and seems like it’s staying for a while.
