HC restrains BSNL to award contract to Ericsson and Nokia

New Delhi, Nov 2 (UNI) Acting on the petition of the US telecom major Motorola, the Delhi High Court today restrained the public sector BSNL from awarding the contract of Rs 20,000 crore GSM expansion project to its rivals--Ericsson and Nokia till November 16.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice Vijender Jain and Justice Kailash Gambhir directed the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) not to sign the contracts with the successful bidders.

Filing a reply to the petition, the BSNL said Motorola did not fulfill all the necessary techno-commercial standards required for the project.

Motorola was also not willing to submit certain desired equipment, said the application filed by Sanjay Kumar Varshney, the Deputy Director General(CMTS) of BSNL.

Moreover, the Evaluation Committee comprising members from C-DOT and IIT did not find the tender documents of Motorola suitable for the project. The 3rd generation mobile technology-- Advanced data services such as mobile to mobile video calls, TV on mobile, video clippings onmobile etc was not with Motorola, said the application.

The Court adjourned the matter till November 16 and asked the Motorola to file a rejoinder to the application.

In a petition Motorola, which had tied up with Chinese company ZTE, alleged that the BSNL had deliberately omitted the company from the financial bid on October 7 after accepting its tender terms fearing alleged security threat from China.

After opening the financial bids on October 7, Swedish telecom major Ericsson has emerged as the lowest bidder followed by Finnish telecom giant Nokia for the 45.5 million line tender, based on third generation (3G) GSM telephony technology.

The petitioner has not been formally informed about the rejection from the participation and Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens had been invited to participate in the financial bid opening scheduled for October 9, said the petition filed by Counsel Ciccu Mukhopadhaya for Motorola.

If the BSNL's decision remained the same after due evaluation, Ericsson would bag the contract for supplying 60 per cent of the equipment, while Nokia would get the remaining 40 per cent at the price quoted by the former company.

UNI PAT SI BD1912